Your Standard Adventure (BEING CONTINUED!)
by GreatOverseer
Summary: Alright, so you've got your standard female protagonist - your standard Minecraft heroine, so to speak. You've got her thrust out into an unforgiving world, sort of fending for herself, you know; she has a 90 percent chance of meeting a guy, and a 99 percent chance it'll be a celebrity. So I think the title fits pretty well. Well, apart from the bits with the elves in them. (R&R)
1. Prologue: A General Description

This is a story about many things.

Yes, it does have some aspects of a cliched Minecraft fanfiction to it. But it's got so much more than that! It's got minecart chases, having tea with the Ender Dragon, Herobrine being a scimitar-wielding badass - but that doesn't matter to you, does it? No, it's all in the romance, isn't it? Well, for those who need a quick jerk-off, there's a romantic subplot. However,if I were to tell you the whole of it I'd be spoiling it. I've already spoiled quite a lot as it is.

Now, if we are ready to begin, let us do so.

We start with a description of our main protagonist, Herobrine. Is he a protagonist? Well, he's the lord of death and the messenger of evil, so he's what we might call a... villain protagonist. But he's more of a neutral villain protagonist. He's less a villain, and more a force of nature.

Herobrine has black hair, a strong jawbone, a healthy tan from the Nether's sun, and a neatly-trimmed black beard covering the lower half of his face. He takes great pride in his beard. He won't have anyone shaving it.

As an outfit he wears a blue short-sleeved shirt and an even darker blue set of jeans. The knees of the jeans are scuffed due to simply being inside the Nether with them (the underworld can be a most corrosive place).

On his back is slung a diamond scimitar. It is very weighty when it is carried, and yet when it is wielded a power comes that dispells all notions of weight. The scimitar is probably magical, but then again I'm only the narrator. I could be lying.

Now let us transition to our heroine.

Her name is Kaylee. She has just had a most unnerving experience, that luckily has happened to several million people/entities before her. In fact, you could say that what she has experienced could be likened to the common cold on Earth. She had been sucked from the real world into Minecraft. As I've said, this is nothing major, seeing as it happens all the time and people act all mystic about it simply for the novelty.

Kaylee has long flowing hair, with the ends dyed purple. For some ungodly reason she is wearing a light and certainly mystic dress in the middle of dead winter. Kaylee probably doesn't know this, seeing as she's _just_ been sucked into Minecraft. She is unarmed, and will soon have to journey out into the open world to collect materials. She will, as a former player, know how to do things, and create a nice house from which she can have adventures.

There is a 90 percent chance she will meet a traveler of the opposite sex and fall madly in love with him. There is a 99 percent chance he will be a celebrity.

But Kaylee doesn't know whether she'll meet a celebrity during her journey, because she has literally _just been sucked in the game_.

She stands at the spawn point up to her ankles in snow, shivering. Her large puppy dog eyes turn heavenwards - excuse me, Aetherwards - as she contemplates the amazing coldness on her blissfully unaccustomed feet. Until that moment she was just a sheltered fangirl. Now, as the winter sun shines over her, she's in the thick of it, ready to die.

But that's enough of young Kaylee, who is shaping up to be your standard heroine/damsel with a dagger. Let's move on to other matters.

Let's examine the antagonist of this nice little story, shall we? Yes, yes, we shall.

Our antagonist is unnamed, but is a source of evil too great and powerful to be imagined. As such, I cannot spoil anything. Now, this character is nothing to be laughed at. Evil is dead serious.

The agents of evil, on the other hand, can be lampooned and lambasted to no end. Then again, so can everyone else, seeing as this is basically a bundle of cliches hastily wrapped up and shipped out as a legit story. We're all good.

Our first agent of evil in the making is Clive. He is another person sucked into Minecraft from the real world. He is tall and handsome and muscled, but when it counts he has the IQ of a testosterone-poisoned bull on crack. His brown hair is slicked back and shiny, and his face is perfectly sculpted. Any artist, paid to carve his face into the side of a mountain, would have broken down crying by the end of it and fallen off his ladder. Clive wears a leather jacket made from a perfectly innocent cow, some (frankly retarded) red shutter shades, a pair of khaki pants, some neon shoes, and a white shirt showing through the front of his jacket.

He's already been in Minecraft for quite some time. He's got a set of perfect diamond armor in his inventory, but doesn't wear it because he is under the impression that he is too awesome to die (or that he is a pivotal figure in the story and therefore will be missed by everyone when he does kick the bucket). Again, he's got the IQ of a testosterone-poisoned bull on crack.

Our other agent of an unseen evil is the dark wizard Marusan, who oversees the dark parts of Minecraft from his dreaded tower of dread. The tower itself is a wonderfully tall and spiky contraption that is engineered to light up in the nighttime and has so much redstone inside it's a wonder Marusan hasn't died from redstone poisoning.

Standing atop the tower, Marusan is a frightful spectacle. Although, on the other side of the screen, he is a kid trying to look awesome and powerful, his skin is... to put it in a word... frightening. He wears a black robe and cowl, and underneath the hood beneath the mask of shadows is a pair of dead red eyes. And get this: he has fifty diamond swords. _Fifty_. You heard me right. So if he breaks one, he has another.

But he prefers not to fight. He instead prefers to rule by fear, intimidation, and when possible lighting a lot of things on fire.

Our final agent is a young elf-looking person by the name of Darathel. Like the example of Clive, above, he is unwittingly a servant of evil. He hasn't become one yet. But he will be swayed. It is only a matter of time. His innocent gray eyes will not remain so. His perfect, long, straight red hair will be stained with the blood of thousands. His cheerful green elf-outfit will be replaced with demonic armor. Darethel will become a conquerer.

But I'm spoiling it too much.

There is also, in the land of Minecraftia, assorted side characters who aren't in any way involved wholesale in the plot. There is Derek, a blond-haired and strong male blacksmith who forges swords with names like "Vanquisher" that can catch opponents on fire. Knoll, a self-described freelancer and bandit, is a mysterious man in a black ninja outfit who is wanted for one whole stack of 64 gold bars; he is considered armed and extremely dangerous when provoked. Delilah is a tree farmer on the outskirts of a Testificate village, and she is also the caretaker of the residents. Her assistant is a dog named Snowy. And of course there are multiple people who have, like Kaylee, been sucked into Minecraft. Some have been there since the beginning of the phenomenon, and others are new.

And me? Why, I'm the narrator. I prefer to remain anonymous, to protect myself from scrutiny.

The basics of the story have been sorted out. Any questions?

... I thought not.

Let's begin the tale.


	2. BOOK ONE

BOOK I: ORIGIN of HISTORY 


	3. I: The Storm Splits

Herobrine strides across the planes, the brave and open plains of Minecraft. He throws his head up in the air and bellows his challenge at the world.

"Come on!" he shouts at the heaving sky thick with snowclouds. "COME ON, BRING IT!"

A barrage of snow cascades down in front of him. Herobrine takes out his diamond scimitar, and holds it up to the sky. The blade begins to glow a deep and intense blue. He screams again, in rage and triumph.

"NOTCH! HEAR ME! GRANT ME THE _POWER_!"

The scimitar's blade dims down to a dull black color, and then... explodes. It literally explodes, I am not kidding you here. I'm a reliable narrator. It explodes in a flash of white light, but when the flash dissipates the blade is still there. Any normal explosion would have practically vaporized the blade, but this... this is no mundane explosion. This right here is a godly explosion. And the shrapnel goes all the way up to the Aether as a beam of light springs out of the scimitar and Herobrine's arms bulge with power.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHGHGHHHHHHHH! POWWWWEEEEEERRRRR! POWER _UNLIMITEEEEEED_!"

The beam slices a hole through the advancing sheet of snowstorm, and cleaves the massive buildup of frozen water and vapor in two. It's an amazing spectacle, and if the Ender Dragons had been flying over he would stop and say, "Wow, what a show." And it is an amazing show. The light from the beam is refracted through all the little crystals of ice inside the cloud and outside it. It reflects off the groundcover of snow. It generally puts a prism to shame. The miraculous light show persists for a half hour. Herobrine's white eyes are opened wide as the godly power courses through the blade. The cloudcover is coming to an end. The winter winds blow fast. The beam makes it to the end of the cloud and breaks through in unrefracted glory. Herobrine screams again, a plea to Notch in the Aether, to stop the power coursing through the Nether to him like a conduit.

_"END IT NOOOOOOOOOOW!"_

The beam fades out, and flickers away. Sparks fly from the dying light, and when it is through Herobrine slumps to the ground. He looks behind him at the biforcated former mass of snow clouds. They are heading their seperate ways, away into the mountains and passing around the lone village. Herobrine sighs in exhaustion.

"That was totally worth it," he remarks, winded.

He stands up limply and trudges off through the snow, away from the village, and into the white horizon. There is an amazing amount of snow on everything. However, the burst of god power from earlier has created a shockwave that pushed the snow around and forced it out of the epicenter. Grass saved from death blinks up at Herobrine as he treads on it.

He walks calmly up a hill, and surveys the snowstruck land in front of his eyes. One tree catches his eye. Or rather, something under the tree catches his eye. There is a girl standing in the cold, huddled against the tree, trying to become warm. Her dress, unusual for this time of year, flutters in the wind and curls around the tree trunk. She shivers.

There is, beneath the "king of the dead, lord of the Nether" exterior, a spark of good and justice. Herobrine starts to jog down the steep embankment of the hill. He trips once or twice and hits rather hard on a few ledges created by the grass. He reaches the bottom and as quietly as he can walks over to the girl. He is a distinctive shape against the snowy land, marching along like a black pawn on a white square on a chessboard.

Alright, that simile went nowhere. The pawn would have to be dinky while the board itself would have to be like the ones you find in upscale malls.

Okay, anyways, he walks up to the tree. The girl looks at him and steps back.

It's now vitally important to the story to describe Kaylee's inner thoughts and feelings. This is called a perspective switch. It's a rather nice feature. I shall use it now, for I know all.

Kaylee steps back in fright. Could this, she wonders, be the legendary and terrifying Herobrine?

"H-hello?" she asks.

Herobrine places a hand on the tree trunk and leans on it.

"You look dead cold," he says coolly. "Tell you what, I'll make us a fire or something... or at least some leather armor... or better yet..." He begins to pull at the bottom hem of his teal shirt. Kaylee tilts her head to one side, puzzled. Herobrine finishes removing the shirt, and hands it to her. She takes it, not knowing what to say. Finally, she thinks of something.

"Why am I here?" she asks.

Herobrine shrugs. "Don't know," he says. "This happens all the time, girl. I'd put the shirt on, by the way."

Kaylee puts the shirt on. It feels warm. That was just the natural byproduct of someone who was alive wearing it, though. It also smells faintly metallic. But it keeps her warm enough, and drapes down to her knees. She looks at Herobrine. The legend is bigger than she had thought.

"Well," says Herobrine, turning away, "goodbye misplaced human. Home you survive." And then he walks back to the hill and climbs back up it. There he stands like a sentinel. Kaylee looks at him, a solid Sharpie drawing on a blank sheet of printer paper. He stares resolutely into the sky and around at the pale earth.

She walks off into the snow.


	4. II: Clive Faces the King of the Dead

Kaylee is lost in the blankness. She stumbles around. She wishes all the time that she had asked Herobrine for some shoes or something. Her feet were cold, cold, cold. They were practically frozen.

"Mwuuh," she said.

She stumbles, collapses to her knees, and falls flat on her face.

We will now divert our attention from our poor heroine Kaylee, and switch to a much more annoyingly obtuse subject: Clive. He is with his similarly obtuse friends, as they tackle a parkour course. He is winning. His lack of space for other things is filled by an excess of space for acrobatics and sports. Personally, as the narrator, I'll remark that he couldn't think his way out of a prison cell, but could indeed smash the door down and beat up the guards.

Clive lands lightly on a block floating in midair over a burning pit of lava. He looks back at the other contestants and grunts quietly. He throws an empty bottle at a contestant and the target flies off his block.

"AAAAAAAGH!" the contestant screams as he falls to his death in the lava.

Clive reaches a large platform and is about to lunge off it to the next when a hand slaps down on his shoulder. He is thrown bodily out of the arena and into the snow outside. A few seconds later, the iron golem's strong arms propell his cronies down to the snow as well.

He stands up. The thoughts swim in his head like flies in a tar pit.

"Caught us cheatin', they did," he says. Clive adjusts his shutter shades. "Blow this f' a lark. If they want to throw us out on our asses then we ain't coming back."

He starts to walk away from the parkour arena, a large hollow tower set into the snowy land. However, ahead of him, he can see a figure coming the opposite direction, his way. He stops and draws an iron sword.

There is a concept in most gangs and organized groups called "our turf". Clive is simply defending his and his gang's "turf", which is everywhere. It is a remarkably primitive idea, much like ancient humans defending their nomadic camps to the last. Only this time it's in Minecraft and executed by idiots. Clive holds the sword in front of him as the intruding figure comes closer and closer. He puts on his determined face.

"If you want to come any closer," he shouts at the figure, "you'll 'ave to go through ME!"

The figure pauses, and two white eyes flash in the bright gloom of the snowfall. The shadow of a curved sword appears in the stranger's hand. Muscles tense, up and down the stranger's arm. Then the stranger screams:

"GIVE ME THE POWER!"

The sword begins to glow. The snowfall clears to reveal, standing with his sword raised above his head, the legendary Herobrine. He's pissed.

Clive backs away, but much like a defensive bull he keeps his guard up and shows signs of hostility. His short brown hair blows in the wintry wind. Herobrine screams incoherently, and a beam courses up from the glowing sword blade. It pierces the clouds, and he directs it at the gang. Clive sees the beam arc downwards, and he lunges out of the way as it lands on one of the gang members. The beam instantly kills him. Herobrine does a sweep with the beam while Clive throws snow overtop of himself to hide from the wrath of the king of the dead.

The beam stops. Herobrine retracts it and continues walking. A corpse is heard to be brushed aside, and once the attacker almost steps on Clive. But only almost. The feet of the pale-eyed man miss his side by an inch.

Clive waits until the footsteps have died away before sitting up slowly and allowing the snow to fall off him in chunks. He stares around at his friends, who are dead on the ground. Their skin looks burnt red, and smoke rises from them as their bodies begin to split into their component pixels.

Shaking, he stands up and walks to each of them, begging for them to be alive.

They are not of course.

Why would you ever think that somewhere in the mix one of these people apart from Clive was living?

No, that's so much bullshit.

Clive falls to his knees. There is only one thing to be done before he can exact his vengeance. He opens his mouth.

"NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" he screams at the Aether. He screams it and screams it until his lungs are emptied and he breathes in. He must find Herobrine. He must destroy him...


	5. III: A Bandit and a Narrator

Alright, let's back away from the story now. The whole narrative will be back after a while, but now I feel it important to talk in more of a narrator's voice for this chapter. Let us start with where our lovely heroine Kaylee is at the moment. And... it looks like she is in the snow dying from hypothermia.

But out of the snow comes a man laying rails. I'm not kidding. Someone's trying to lay tracks down in a snowstorm. As he lays the rails (very fast, I might add) a minecart comes screaming down them. It is being driven by our aforementioned side character, Derek. Derek, if you don't remember, is the blacksmith who forges swords with names like "Vanquisher" that can make people into a column of fire upon the first strike. But that isn't all he does.

He is this region of Minecraft's only conductor and goods shipper. He is pulling behind him several thousand wooden chest-filled carts, each housing a different commodity. But there are other carts that are used for people in this train. We'll call them passenger carts. Quite a few contain long-nosed and high-foreheaded villagers, and some others contain various animals. There are also a few players sitting in carts, on their way to the nearest town.

But even though he is pulling the resources of a small nation behind him, Derek pauses when he sees Kaylee huddled up in the snow. His rail-layer taps him on the shoulder.

"What are you doing, idiot?" he whispers intensely.

"Just stay on board, will you?" Derek grumbles, and vaults over the edge of the driver's car. He walks up to Kaylee and shakes her. Her eyes open. Derek reels at how unusually large and green they are. He even notices the orange rim around the irises. This, he decides, must be one of those "sucked into Minecraft" people. It doesn't mean, however, that Derek will leave Kaylee to die in the snow.

"Hey," he said. "You look dead cold. Come inside the train."

Kaylee sits up weakly, then tries to stand. But she cannot, and her legs give out. Because that's what you get when you don't go outside often! Remember to get outside frequently, kids!

Derek picks her up. She is light from all those years after she discovered Minecraft and gradually got thinner from lesser portions. Derek places her inside a train car, and then gets back to the driver's seat. He nods at the tracklayer, who... lays the track down. The minecart train speeds off, pigs and all.

Let us now transition to a small hill that rises overtop some small spruces. There is a man in a black ninja outfit. You may remember him from the prologue. He is wanted for 64 gold bars. Therefore he is on the run, as many people with a bounty on their heads do. But while he is on the run he is liable to perhaps, once or twice, stop a few travelers and... politely relieve them of their goods. Not for any material reason, but because he likes to see their faces as he quietly takes their items from their supine and crippled forms.

He looks around, and sharpens his stone sword. Just one blow is all he needs. He just needs to catch passerby by surprise. The strength of the weapon doesn't matter, nor does the size, but the way they are used.

The bandit doesn't see the minecart train coming until it is too late. The train speeds by on a rapidly growing set of tracks. The bandit lunges down from the hill, but by that time the train is gone.

"I'll show them," he mutters. "Evading a bandit. The nerve, the sheer nerve!"

He places a minecart from his inventory down on the tracks and sets off after the fleeing train.


	6. IV: Tea With the Ender Dragon

Herobrine reaches the end of the world. He steps to the edge and gazes down over the edge. The bottomless cliff stretches down. The lower depths are enshrouded in a dark mist flecked with gray particles, resembling ash or black snow. Something is burning far down. Herobrine knows it's molten rock.

Contrary to popular belief, the Nether isn't actually as bad as many think. I admit, there are the mile-long and two mile-wide lava pools dotted everywhere, and a demonic map that tries to screw with your vision, and gigantic ghostly disembodies baby heads that glide around on tentacles. And of course there are the Pigmen. Good Notch, the Pigmen. But aside from those small stains, the reputation of the Nether has largely remained untarnished. It's a prime source of natural beauty, with endless vistas displaying all the dimension's tourist magnets. Oh, and the giant floating baby heads, but that hardly matters to a seasoned tourist.

It also, incidentally, serves as Herobrine's dimension. Now, as long as he's inside the bounds of the Nether, nothing can harm you. That's why you sometimes get brief periods of reprieve from the monsters on long Nether-spiditions... Nether expeditions... bleh.

Herobrine stares down at the entrance of the Nether below, a gigantic portal that stretches across the bottom of the world and through the upper reaches of the void. He takes a deep breath and jumps. He falls, the walls flying past him and the light diminishing. Soon there is complete darkness.

Mere mortals cannot enter this portal. They would die if even so much as a hair touched the rippling surface. But Herobrine can. And he does. The body falls and disappears through the portal.

Herobrine lands on a shelf of Netherrack. He picks himself up and turns around. There is a door set into the 'Rack right behind him. It is made of wood. This may seem like a design flaw, for many monsters within the Nether are fire-spitting. But the monsters know deep down that if they were to break down the door and enter they wouldn't see another day again. Herobrine pushes the door open and walks inside.

Unusually, there are small purple particulates floating in the air. He sticks a finger out, and one of the little violet snowflakes lands on the tip. It sits there, glittering. They are larger than most End Particles. Herobrine suspects an old friend might be inside the house, waiting for his return. He cautiously unsheathes his diamond scimitar and flattens himself against one of the stone walls of his house. Creeping towards the door to the kitchen, he braces himself against a powerful attack and kicks the door open. It swings outward, revealing...

...nothing.

"Drat," Herobrine curses. Then he realizes he sounds like a villain and instead says, "Damn."

He steps into the kitchen. His feet make no noise on the floor, which is made of spongy mycelium. Herobrine believes it's good for his toes, to stand on bizarrely unstable ground for once in his life.

He is now standing in two large indentations. They look at first glance like the floor has sunk of its own accord. But upon closer inspection Herobrine realizes that these indentations are footprints. Reptilian footprints. Reptilian footprints with claws. Large claws. Herobrine opens a chest and comes out of it wearing full diamond armor. He's notoriously disaster-prepared.

Quietly, without nudging anything important, Herobrine creeps across the mycelium towards the wooden door to the dining room. The glowstone lamp is on, although Herobrine swears he had turned it off long ago. He reaches the door and peers in through one of the four top windows. There is an abundance of purple snow, cluttering the room. They have even accumulated on the floor a half-foot deep. The footprints lead to the table, on which sit two small china plates atop which ride small delicate china teacups. They are adorned with purple.

"Ender," Herobrine mutters. He prepares to bust the door open, sword raised like a baseball bat above his shoulder. He swings at the door and turns it into a cloud of splinters. At once a flood of purple mist and a horde of purple snowflakes charge out, at last relieved from the pressure. The mess slides into the kitchen and piles up at the far end next to the ice box.

Herobrine releases a pent-up breath and risks a look around the doorframe. The Ender Dragon himself is sitting at the left end of the table, demurely holding the plate with the tea on it between his two wings. Herobrine sheathes his sword and walks into the room.

"Alright," he says, businesslike, "who invited you here?"

"I did," says the Ender Dragon. "And hello to you as well. Would you care to join me for a spot of tea?"

"A spot..." Herobrine frowns. He has no knowledge of Ender slang.

"Yes, a spot," clarifies the Ender Dragon. "Do sit down, Herobrine. We have much to discuss."

Herobrine reluctantly sits down, and picks the teacup up carefully in one large and calloused hand.

"Be careful with that," warns the Ender Dragon, "it was my mother's old set!"

"Fine, fine..." Herobrine sips the tea. He thinks it tastes too purple. But he swallows it anyways. No point in offending the ruler of another dimension.

"I have news from the Overworld," the Ender Dragon says matter-of-factly. He raises a scaly, horned eyebrow. "This would of course concern the dark antics of the wizard Marusan. He is attempting works of... evil."

Herobrine sighs.

"You know I don't like that word," says Herobrine.

"What, evil?" says the Ender Dragon, surprised. "Why, it's perfectly adequate to describe the antics of a player gone wrong." He hangs his majestic, jet-black head. "I'll always remember my mother," he sighs.

"Evil's too much of a stock phrase," Herobrine says. "Let's use 'malevolent', how about it?"

"It doesn't matter," sighs the Ender Dragon in exhasperation. "Right now we have... _malevolent_ forces at work in this world. We need a chosen one."

The reason there is not "The" chosen one is that there is more than one chosen one. There used to be a single one, but now that millions of people have been sucked into Minecraft and been revealed as the chosen one it is now proper to refer to any traveler from the other side as "a" chosen one.

"Which chosen one?" Herobrine asks.

"Well, do you not know any?" the Ender Dragon enquires. "Eh?"

Herobrine's white eyes light up.

"Yes," he says slowly. "Just this morning. Poor girl spawned under a tree, all huddled against the cold... I didn't catch her name at all. Gave her my shirt, too."

"Ah," says the Ender Dragon. "That is why you are without that particular garment, I couldn't help noticing."

"Yeah, your eyes were on my bare chest all this time," remarks Herobrine sardonically.

"And you shall find her based on whether or not she has your shirt?" the Ender Dragon asks.

"That appears to be the plan," says Herobrine.


	7. V: The Train Station

The minecart train slows to a halt beside a small rudimentary train station made of wooden planks and the sweat of a dozen workers. The bandit's cart is hastily stowed away inside a voluminous dark pocket, and the holder slips behind the train.

Inside the bounds of the train station are several mules and one cargo carrier. They look quite miserable, for there is a two-inch deep layer of snow on the brick floor. The cargo carrier's feet are submerged inside the white fluff. He looks at Derek impatiently.

"Well, get a move-on," he barks, moving from chilled foot to chilled foot at a rapid pace. "Don't have all day here, now do we?"

"Wait a min," says Derek, vaulting over the side of the minecart engine and walking all the way over to the chests. He picks one up and places it in the saddlebag of a mule. It snorts at Derek as another is placed on the opposite side. Derek then waves his hand, and some helpers dismount the passenger minecarts and begin to load the goods as well.

The cargo carrier stares at the mules. The hooves seem to be... sinking into the soft white carpet. Derek looks over at the mules approvingly.

"We'll be taking it all to Obsidian falls," he says.

There is a sigh beside him.

"No, no, no," says the cargo carrier. Derek tilts his head to one side.

"Why not?" he says.

"Well, for a start, the weight's too much for the mules," says the cargo carrier. He gestures wordlessly over his shoulder to where, a few meters off, some hands are loading the chests out of the minecarts and onto the saddlebags of the donkeys. "They won't hold all the way to Obsidian Falls! Their backs are fragile, Derek, we can't just snap them in half all the time!"

"They seem to be doing well at the moment," muses Derek. He looks at the closest mule, which coincidentally has most of the baggage heaped on its back. It flicks its tail contentedly and passes an uncaring brown eye over the cargo carrier. It's as if the mule is saying, "Hey, how about you carry it, see how strong your back is, huh?"

The cargo carrier flinches at having been proven wrong, by a mere minecart operator no-less.

"F-fine," he concedes. "The mules take the baggage. We ride to Obsidian Falls in an hour?"

"An hour," Derek agrees. The cargo carrier goes off to tend to the mules, and Derek walks over to the new passenger. Kaylee is sitting on a bench near the minecart train, hands folded in front of her. She is wearing a ridiculously large teal shirt, and the soft snow is piling up in the creases. But she seems warm enough. Derek sits beside her.

"New here, are you?" he asks.

Kaylee nods.

"Shy?"

Kaylee nods again, and looks at Derek with massive puppy-dog eyes. Derek recoils. Holy Notch, he thinks, those eyes are enormous!

"Well," he says, trying to push those eyes out of his memory, "we're going to Obsidian Falls in an hour. You're going, right?"

"Where's Obsidian Falls?" says Kaylee, confused.

"Just over the mountains here," replied Derek, pointing eastward.

"Okay," says Kaylee, wrinkling her nose against a sudden gust of biting wind.

"I never did catch your name, by the way," Derek says offhandedly.

"Kaylee," the girl replies. She tosses her head back to get some of her hair behind her and not blowing all into her face.

"That's a pretty name," remarks Derek.

"It's my mom's," says Kaylee. A tear glistens in the corner of her eye. She blinks and it's gone.

Many people sucked into Minecraft from the other side of the screen have unusual and sometimes tragic backstories. Kaylee is no different. Her mother... well, I'll let her tell the avid reader what happened to her mother before she was sucked in. I'd be spoiling it if I were to tell you right at this moment.

"Well," says Derek, patting her on the shoulder, "you're lucky to have such a name. It is truly unique, in a strange sort of way."

He stands up from the bench and walks back to the mules. They are now carrying all the goods on their strong and sturdy backs. The cargo carrier immediately runs up to Derek.

"We're ready to go," he informs the blacksmith.

"But we need at least an hour for provisions and food," Derek protests.

"We've packed all that as well," says the cargo carrier. "And," he adds in a whisper, "quite frankly I'll be glad to be rid of you." He darts away before Derek can clout him alongside the head.

Kaylee walks up to a mule and pats it on the muzzle.

"It's a wonderful animal," she says. The brown eyes look at her, and then roll up in an "oh, brother" sort of way. Derek nods and swings himself up onto the back of the mule nearest to him. He takes Kaylee by the hand and lifts her into the saddle, so she is sitting behind him.

"Right," says Derek, turning the mule eastward. "Off we go."

He waves to the cargo carrier as the mules begin moving, mounted by other hands. They disappear over the gravel road.

The cargo carrier sighs in relief.

"Thank Notch they're gone," he says.

It is then that the bandit beheads him, steals a mule and urges it after the fleeing party. Criminals sometimes don't need standards.


	8. VI: A Note on the Mountains, etc

Obsidian Falls is a town on the other side of a truly formidable mountain range: the Pickaxe Ridge.

The Ridge is a large, hundred mile-long spine of tall and jagged mountains that even today strike fear into the bravest hearts. They are very precipitous. The bottom roots of the mountains are caves, a network so dense and so twisty that people who fall inside never return. The steep sides of the peaks are made of tough gray stone, which is murder to the hands and feet. Notch save you if you were ever to slide down the side by accident. As the altitude increases the snow piles on deeper and deeper, until you get layers of snow so thick that they harbor caves of great proportion. At the top a climber can find himself looking down into oblivion.

And yet they have been traversed.

This is because the first pioneers of mountaineering placed in wooden walkways. The trouble is that these wooden walkways are very thin, only a few feet wide, and sometimes only a foot in certain places.

Plus there are frequent snowstorms, storms that blanket an entire side of a mountain in thick, suffocating snow. This snow can create walls, trapping travelers within airless caves, waiting for them to die.

And this is where Derek and Kaylee are entering, along with the mules and the hands. And the baggage.

Personally I feel sorry for them.

Now, it is time to re-examine our characters. The narrative has shaken up the designation of characters. Good becomes evil, neutral becomes good, good remains good, villains become heroes or stay villains.

Our blacksmith Derek is now our focal protagonist, with Herobrine taking a backseat so to speak. He is the one we will focus on as we journey into the mountains and recount the chilling tales of horror and intrigue that awaits.

And then we have our bandit. What is his name again... oh yes, Knoll. He's going to the mountains as well. He has literally no idea what to expect, seeing as he has always preyed on people at the side of the road in the snowy plains.

Kaylee seems to be in good company. Derek is steadfast and determined to complete the journey. However, since she is a chosen one, she shall be the focal point of much action and mystery. It's just the way it is. So I'd hate to be her at this moment in time.

The baggage hands, unfortunately, are expendable. They serve no purpose to the story except as compainions on the long trek across the Ridge. Their numbers will drop, and most will be dead by the end of it all, except for those resilient enough to survive.

Just so you can feel some measure of pain at their passing, however, I shall describe them, give their names, and share information about their backgrounds and their family life.

Jeremy is a senior hand. He is short, has gray-brown hair combed over a central bald spot, and has lost several teeth due to several accidents in his profession. He is, at the moment, dressed in a parka bought from the train station. He carries a pack on his back, in which is stowed a chest. It is very heavy, and the straps bite into his shoulders. Jeremy's family is very extensive. He has a wife a thousand miles away, plus a dozen children and two grandchildren. He tries to keep in touch, but sometimes the letters are lost. Carrier wolves can be sidetracked, after all.

Jeremy's assistant, Caleb, has only been in the job for a year. Unlike Jeremy, he has neglected to dress in a parka, and is thus relying on several sets of leather armor draped over each other. Caleb doesn't want to die, and can't afford to; he has a sweetheart waiting for him in Obsidian Falls, and when he arrives there he will quit being a hand and join her in marriage. He is calm, quiet, and has chiseled features. His impressive height of six feet only serves to make him that much more susceptible to an arrow to the forehead.

Nero is somewhat of a strange one. He is of normal height, of normal build (in fact a little on the skinny side of things), and of normal personality. Nero's hair is a dull brown color, and coils in a twisted curtain down to his mid-back. He is very conservative of his resources, and has been known to sometimes go days without food. However, when he finally does get hungry and it ends up he didn't pack food, he will eat things from the side of the road. And usually he doesn't get sick from them. Nero's metabolism is just that strong.

Cato is an apprentice miner who Derek hired two years before. He has since risen to an astonishing level, mining through sheer cliff faces so the rail-layer can... lay down the rails for the train. He is stocky, muscular, and cheerful, and usually bores the company to death with his prattle. However, he is deep down a tormented soul. All his family were killed three years ago when the first Biome Buster went off on his home island of Haliko. Cato only survived because he was deep underground mining when the bomb went off. There was but one layer of stone that kept him seperated from the blast. Gives a new meaning to the term "plot armor", doesn't it?

There is of course the rail-layer, a man named Rail by his parents. I'm not kidding, his name is literally "Rail". They must have been quite big in the train business. Rail's backstory is somewhat similar to Cato's, but where Cato's family died from an explosion, Rail's parents died from a train carrying a mysterious zombie plague. Rail used to be worried that the plague would somehow telepathically spread to him, but he got over it seeing as how that was so stupid as to be impossible.

Finally, there is Double, a mysterious tall and burly stranger who joined them from the train station. Not much is known about him. He wears a brown hood and cloak over leather armor. The hood is draped over a mask made of the front half of a skull. Intimidating enough as it is, I'm sure, but it shall be made all the more intimidating by revelations that shall be forthcoming later. Right now he is an expendable hand who only accompanied the group because of the money awaiting from the sale of the transported goods in Obsidian Falls.

This is the fellowship that is making its way to Obsidian Falls. The trek, as I have said before, will be a long and arduous one. Many will die in this struggle to the other side... although not the main characters at this point. They have plot armor, so they can afford to survive. The others though? Don't be so sure.


	9. VII: The Mountain Road & Danger

Snow creates a white speckled curtain in the sky. Visibility is down 60%. The party moves up the wooden catwalk. Derek and Kaylee are at the front. Kaylee looks down over the edge. The bottom is enshrouded in mist. She is very glad of this.

Incidentially, if the deep gorge between the two mountains hadn't been enshrouded in fog, Kaylee would have suffered explosive vertigo. That is to say, her head would have exploded from the sudden rush of blood that would go to it. The combined effects of the blood rush and the sudden immense gain in perspective making her take in too much information would cause her cranium to explode like a melon in front of a shotgun. Thankfully this condition is too rare to be fully documented. It's only been encountered in those who've been raised in isolation, such as in a sheltered environment, and haven't seen a significant precipice in their existance so far.

Derek spurs the mule onwards. They turn a corner, slowly and carefully. A mule snorts behind the leader. From that approximate area Jeremy coughs. The party continues.

The wooden catwalk suddenly curves, off the side of the mountain and heading towards another to the right. Derek swears and draws the mule to a standstill. He observes that the bend onto the new segment of catwalk (now a bridge) is at a sharp ninety degree angle. The bridge itself is only two feet wide, and the snow makes it slippery enough as it is. So traversing this corner will have to be undertaken in a more strategic manner.

Derek carefully dismounts the mule, and so does Jeremy. The rest of the hands dismount as well. Kaylee is left in the saddle. She knows that she is safe on the back of the steady mule.

"Alright," Derek whispers to Jeremy when they are in a small huddle, excluding the mysterious Double. "We'll do it like this: one person goes at a time. Got it?"

"Wait, but hold on," says Cato. "Won't that sort of, y'know, conclude in some daft fellow losing balance and making the bridge break so the last few people have to jump over, manner of speakin'?"

"No," says Derek.

"That's usually what happens," says Cato.

"Yeah," agrees Rail. "It happened in 1880 and 1945! Plus all the adventure novels and stuff have at least one scene where that happens."

"But it won't happen now," reassures Derek, resisting the urge to facepalm. "Look, whoever built this bridge must've known what he was doing when he crossed. He must've known that strength isn't always in numbers on bridges. He's..." Derek seeks for a word. "...savvy."

"Of course he was savvy," bursts out Caleb hotly, "he built the damn thing!"

There is silence. Far off there is a natural-sounding roar.

"Just agree with me, will you?" says Derek eventually, turning away. "Oh, and don't be so loud. Careless talk causes avalanches. Now saddle up."

Derek carefully climbs back onto the mule and turns it around. A hoof almost slips over the edge, but the mule is smart enough to bring it back up before irrepairable damage is done. Kaylee doesn't dare look over the edge. Remember: explosive vertigo.

They set off across the bridge. The mule's steps echo, even with the fog. Derek mutters to himself as he moves the reigns to stop the animal from teetering over the edge into oblivion. They are at the midpoint, then three quarters of the way across, and then... freedom. They have reached the other end, which is four feet wide and is considerably more sturdy and less precipitous.

"Alright," Derek calls across, although not too loud. "Someone else come across!"

Jeremy begins to cross. Suddenly, his mule's legs slide out. The animal lands on its side. Jeremy cries out and scrabbles at the edge of the bridge, but it's too late. The mule falls, and the reigns are caught underneath Jeremy's armpits. He's yanked off the bridge and falls into the mist with a scream that fades away slowly. Derek has his arm around Kaylee.

"Don't look down," he whispers, "don't look down."

The rest of the crew is silent, looking at the indentations left by the flailing and desperate hands.

"Oh Notch," whispers Cato.

"Well, I'm next," says Nero. He spurs his mule into a gallop, and unlike Derek he charges at full speed across the bridge. He's either so wrecklessly bold or fiendishly stupid that the powers that be decide not to dump him over the edge after all, and he finishes the gap with a flying leap that takes him skidding to a halt on the other side.

"I'll be," says Derek. "That was something."

"That was nothing," brags Nero.

"Er, I'll go next," says Cato, somewhat nervously.

"Go on," shouts Derek.

Cato tries to go full speed across the gap, like Nero. However, his mule gives up on the way over. Cato kicks it in the side to make it go faster, but his fate is sealed. The bridge begins to creak under him.

"Caleb, squeeze past him!" Derek orders.

Caleb takes one look at the creaking bridge and then runs as fast as he can down the surface. He ducks and skids between the mule's legs, finishing in a shower of snow. As he does so, the bridge collapses underneath Cato.

"FLY, YOU FOOLS!" he bellows as he slips into the abyss.

There is silence.

"Well, what the fuck we gonna do, just sit here?" Rail shouts from the other side of the broken bridge.

"Just hang tight," Derek calls back, "I think we can mine a bit of stone to bridge the gap!"

He sets to work at the mountainside, and comes up with five blocks of cobblestone. He tiptoes onto the bridge, and carefully begins to set these inside the gap.

A shout from behind alerts him to something wicked.

"CREEPER!" Kaylee is screaming. Derek turns, and sure enough there is a huge green phallic animal with four legs coming straight at him making a hissing noise. Derek steps backwards and pulls one of his custom swords out of his inventory. It shines with enchantment.

"Get back, you cur!" he cries, and gives the Creeper a hard _thwack! _on the midsection. His opponent loses balance, and falls to its death, legs flailing along with a disappearing hiss. But already there is another Creeper descending from a ledge near Rail and Double. Rail is alerted to the Creeper's presence and swipes at it with a wooden sword. But the Creeper has already been lit and the explosion throws him backwards. Derek watches in horror as he hits the snow hard and rolls to the edge of the cliff. He begins to crest the precipice - only for Double to reach out one hand and grab him by his backpack straps.

Another five are coming up the walkway, towards Double and the vulnerable Rail. They edge up behind Double, who freezes, swings Rail onto his back, and whips out something that shines a dull periwinkle. It slides through the air. A Creeper is hit with the sharp end of the blade and dies instantly, knocking two of its bretheren to the ground and then off the edge of the road. The remaining two try to charge Double while his guard is down, but Double slashes the end of the walkway with the sword. The walkway collapses, and the two mobs fall into nothing.

Derek finishes the walkway and allows Double and Rail to cross.

He catches up with them.

"That was something," he says, the second time that day.

"Think nothing of it," is Double's only reply.

They continue their journey, until they find a fairly warm and dry and not-snowy cave. Kaylee jumps off the mule first, and collapses on the floor, although carefully so as not to look any less appealing. I... don't know. It's a common trait among displaced female tourists.


	10. VIII: The Ender Dragon Gets News

The Ender Dragon finishes mixing the tea ingredients, and then sets the kettle on to boil. He is still using Herobrine's house as a surrogate living space. His mentality is that Herobrine can't know if he can't see. This will soon be proven to be wrong, of course, as things go.

As the Ender Dragon sits, waiting, at the table, a voice startles him.

"Ender?!"

"Yeeees?" says the Ender Dragon, looking around. His gaze alights upon the window, and outside it the sea of lava. Unusually, the refraction of light through the window on the opposite wall seems at first glance like it could be a face...

"Over here," Herobrine's voice barks. The light pattern shifts slightly.

"Oh, so that's how you communicate," says the Ender Dragon.

"Yeah. I can't pay my phone bill." Herobrine's light-face cracks a grin. "Anyhow," he says, "I have found our chosen one."

"Pray tell me about it," bids the Ender Dragon, as the teakettle begins to make a slight whistle.

"Her name is Kaylee. She is currently on the road with a cargo shipping company," the voice of the death king says, matter-of-factly.

"Oh really?" the Ender Dragon says inquisitively.

"Yes. They are crossing the Pickaxe Ridge."

"My Notch," the Ender Dragon whispers. He thinks that if he had sunglasses he's have taken them off dramatically.

"Two people have died, plus seven Creepers," Herobrine informs the shocked Dragon.

"Hopefully there will be no more _player _casualties," the lord of the End says quietly.

"Hopefully," Herobrine agrees.

The kettle whistles shrilly. The Ender Dragon apologizes to Herobrine, who accepts it and turns off the feed. The Dragon then goes off to brew himself some reviving beverage. No milk this time, though. This was his "worried tea". He had tea for every emotion.


	11. IX: Servants of Marusan

The cave is very, very hard to get used to. Kaylee sleeps on the open cold floor, a spike of rock jabbing her spine every few seconds. She tosses and turns fitfully, trying to get to bed, but nature has other plans for her, and she cannot. Her head has not yet shut itself off; her body has not yet ceased to function. She is sleepless.

The others seem to be doing okay, though. Derek is asleep, and so are the others. Even Double is sleeping, although in his case he is standing near the outer entrance immobile.

A sound makes her lift her head. It sounds like a faint smacking. Something wet falls to the floor, although faintly. Then it ceases.

With wariness, Kaylee sits up and gets to her feet. She is silent, on her tiptoes as she begins to probe around the cave with her massive eyes. It is dark, except for a torch. She snatches it and makes her way deeper into the cave.

A few small black things detatch themselves from the ceiling and flutter away.

Kaylee has seen bats before, in her Minecraft worlds, when she was still on the right side of the screen. They had never scared her, for they could never hurt her in real life or even in the game world. But this is the other side. She can't be sure of what could happen if one decides to sink its small white teeth into her shoulder.

Kaylee swats at a bat, but she misses. Giving up she treks deeper and deeper into the cave.

She emerges in a room lit by a solitary pool of lava. On the other side of the room there is a crunching sound.

She realizes with horror that Rail had been absent from the front chamber. And so had Nero.

She walks carefully around the melted rock, and illuminates the darkness beyond. Nero is lying on the floor. A steady trickle of red is oozing from under his arm - in fact, it is oozing from all sides of the body. Kaylee tiptoes over to the corpse, and turns it over. And screams.

An entire half of Nero's body has been mangled and wrecked by something unknown. Whatever it had been, it has left great tooth marks on the exposed bone, and there are several tendons hanging loosely over the rim of torn skin. Kaylee gags in revulsion. And the someone taps her on the shoulder. She spins around. Rail confronts her. He looks similarly disgusted.

"What happened to him?" he says slowly. He bends down by his side. "Looks like some monster got him."

"Yeah," agrees Kaylee, shivering. Herobrine's teal shirt hangs loosely like a dress over her small frame, and her eyes are very wide.

"What say you we go and search for this monster, eh?" Rail offers, grinning.

"O-okay," says Kaylee, huddling closer to Rail. "Just promise... never leave. I'll hold the torch."

"Brilliant," grins Rail. Then his face falls again, and he looks at his comrade. "A noble man, he was," he says. Then he takes Kaylee's arm and walks deeper into the cavern.

It gets gradually darker. Kaylee's torch flickers.

Rail promises again that "I won't leave you".

Kaylee is frightened.

I have to say at this moment that I am a fan of the horror genre. But, no matter how much I'll fall for a good, gory experience, this next scene here goes a little too far for me. If I were in Kaylee's shoes, I would have known the events that are about to transpire, and would prepare myself accordingly. But Kaylee doesn't know. The horror is doubled for her.

Anyways...

Rail and Kaylee enter a large room. They scan around it eagerly.

Suddenly, the torch flickers out completely.

Kaylee is now completely enveloped by a thick murky dark. Rail still has his arm protextively on Kaylee's shoulder. Their footsteps echo loudly on the stone.

I must interrupt again to suggest that all readers younger than thirteen can step away and close the browser. Now. It'll help. But, then again, when have warning labels ever been respected?

Rail whispers to Kaylee that he has found another tunnel, and guides her to its mouth. Then they walk down the long corridor. Suddenly the ceiling starts to slope downwards. Kaylee has to crouch. Her dress brushes the floor. Suddenly, Rail disappears from her side. She freezes.

There is a chittering from somewhere closeby, and yet far off at the same time.

Then a torch flares up behind her and Kaylee turns to see Double, hunched over, a diamond blade clutched in one hand. He looks up, and the skull mask is red in the firelight.

"Rail's dead," he says solemnly.

"Oh," says Kaylee flatly.

"We must fly," Double says, taking Kaylee by the arm again. "Servants of Marusan may be lurking."

"Marusan? Who -"

But Double is pulling her along the corridor. Suddenly from behind her a scream pierces the air. Red spatters onto her back, and she turns to see viscera and shredded meat roaring out of the tunnel she came out of. There is a crunching noise, and then flecks of cloth begin flying out along with the muscle. The screaming is continuing, however.

"Run," Double hisses, and quickens his pace. The screaming stops abruptly. But behind them something is running up the passage on their heels. It makes a clicking noise on the stone floor. Double actually lifts Kaylee up and slings her onto his shoulder, in what is called the "damsel-in-distress maneuver". The clicking becomes louder. An arrow thunks into the wall next to Double, and he whirls around sword raised. He is now running in reverse, something Kaylee had only thought happened in movies.

"Stay back," he warns the advancing... thing. "BACK, I say. By the name of Notch!"

The monster comes into the torchlight. Kaylee gasps.

The bones are still plastered with red, and there are shreds of organ left on the ribs. It is - well, it used to be Rail. But his skin is peeled off, and he has become an animated skeleton with a shortbow in hand. And he is riding a spider with glowing ruby eyes.

Double slashes out with the diamond sword, but the rider steers his steed onto a wall and runs at the two. Double retreats, slashing frantically. One of the skeleton's arms comes off with a _snick! _Double stops and holds the sword in front of him. The skeleton rider, not anticipating this, cannot stop itself as it careens into the end of the sword and sinks down the blade. There is a bone-grinding moment, and the backbone splits in two pieces. The skeleton has been slain, and Double quickly finishes the spider with a blow to the head that slices it in half.

They turn and run back up the passage. As they enter the lava room, Kaylee shrieks. There is another skeleton, obviously the peeled corpse of Nero. They both know this because there is a rolled-up wad of red meat interspersed with clothes laid in one corner. The skeleton steps forward menacingly. Double simply beheads it. The decapitated skull rolls around on the floor with a slightly stunned look (insofar as the very limited facial features can convey). The headless body shuffles around a bit clutching at the stump, then shatters.

Double sighs.

"There may be more evil in these halls," he says. "Come, we must wake our companions and escape. Marusan is plotting."

"Excuse me," Kaylee begins, "but who -"

"I said later!"

Derek is already awake when they enter the cave mouth. So is the only hand left, the tall young man known as Caleb.

"I heard shouting," says Derek, getting up and rubbing his back. He has an iron sword drawn.

"We must fly," says Double, putting a hand on Derek's shoulder.

"Fly?" says Derek. "We can't fly."

"I mean get out of here as soon as we can," Double says exhasperatedly. "Good Notch, doesn't anyone speak the old speak here anymore?"

They peek out of the cave mouth. The outer cliffs, connected by lengths of wooden plank, are deserted. Also, it's raining. It's raining super monsoon-style. But at least the mist has cleared, and there are no mobs in sight.

"Alright, let's go," Double says, and they charge into the rain.

They have only gone twenty meters when a scream shatters the night behind them. They turn, and see a skeleton with tattered black fabric around his waist leading a charge of skeletons and creepers after the party. Double mutters to himself, and raises the diamond sword above his head.

_"BythepowerofNotchgivemethepowertosmitetheevil..."_ he is muttering. The sword begins to glow brighter.

"By the power of Notch," he growls, "give me the power to smite the EVIL!" The last word comes as a shout. The sword flares, flickers out, and then erupts into a full-blown laser beam. He points it at the leading skeleton. The bones glow red like embers, and crumple. The rest of the mobs maneuver around the beam.

"BY THE POWER OF NOTCH," Double is now screaming, "GIVE ME THE POWER TO SMITE! THE! _EVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL_!"

The sword launches a massive ball of energy at the oncoming mobs. They are blown backwards. Some skeletons remain, however, and begin launching a flurry of arrows thick as snow at our heroes. Mostly they clatter on the rocks, but one hits Caleb and skewers him through the right shoulder.

"AAAGH!" he screams in agony. Kaylee can see all too well the arrowhead covered in blood, sticking a full five inches out of the flesh of his back. "Agh..." he cries hoarsely, "oh Notch... IT HURTS!" He falls to his knees. Kaylee feels sorry for Caleb as he faces the oncoming swarm of mobs. He fishes a sword out of his inventory.

"If it's my life on the line," he mutters, rain pattering on his back and head, "allow me to use it well." He lunges upwards and meets the oncoming horde with ferocious flashing steel. Bones fly every which-way, as Caleb bellows his battle cry. A second arrow slides into the center of his chest, but Caleb is uncaring. The fight has taken over. He drops to his knees, still swinging the sword. But now a skeleton has its bow to Caleb's head. The fallen warrior looks imploringly at the retreating party. Derek salutes, and the skeleton kills Caleb right there. His corpse falls with a thunk. The bone creatures descent upon the fresh recruit, and pay the fleeing company no heed.


	12. X: The Valley and Elf Land

They emerge on the other side of the mountains. It is just the three of them: Derek on foot, Double on foot, and Kaylee on foot. Oddly, they are arranged in order of height. The Minecraft universe is known for having the most photogenic moments.

The party has now strayed into a green valley, full of lush birch trees and devoid of snow. Unbeknownst to them, it is the second most infamous valley in all of the land. For it was here that, centuries ago, the _worst _written work by _any_ author _ever _was created. No, not created... chained down to the pages of a leatherbound volume and locked away in a chest somewhere deep underground. It is considered by many Minecraftian archaologists and scholars to be a fanfiction of the realm, but even the legendary badfics cannot measure up to the sheer grand horridity of this work.

The title is unknown, and thank Notch for that.

The evil of the writing swells from the ground, invisible and undetectable, as the fellowship crosses from the stony steps of the Pickaxe Ridge into the valley. They walk into the trees, who whisper with eldritch voices in a tongue only evil can comprehend.

"Anyone up for some water?" Derek asks hopefully. He holds up a bucket.

"I would like that, yes," says Double.

"Me, too," Kaylee agrees. Derek nods and walks off to where the sound of running water can be heard. He dips the bucket into the flowing cool waters of the stream, and returns with it sloshing up against the edge.

Kaylee brings the clear cool liquid to her lips, and drinks. She brings the bucket down, and sighs in satisfaction. Double appears to give her a slightly concerned look before downing half the remaining water and handing the rest to Derek. He takes a few sips and then stretches a cow hide over the top to make a rudimentary lid. They continue the journey.

Under the eaves of trees, hitherto undisturbed pockets of malevolence flutter into shreds at the approach of the travelers.

"Obsidian Falls is near here, yes?" asks Double.

"Yeah," Derek confirms. "As I remember, it's vaguely to the left from here. It's at the very end of the valley." He looks out at where the sun is slowly sinking. "Oh," he says glumly, "and it's almost nighttime. We'd best be on guard or something."

They draw weapons. Double taps Kaylee on the shoulder, and hands her a wooden sword. The edge is sharpened to a razor-thin point.

"You might try your hand at this sometime," he says.

"I'll keep it in mind," Kaylee replies.

They look behind them at where rainclouds are making the Ridge into a seething mass of fluff and lightning. The Ridge, incidentially, will be seen as a welcome relief after what awaits the travelers inside the walls of the valley. Ah, but I'm being a spoiler. I shouldn't do that, it's against my moral code.

As they enter a clearing, something green and lithe springs down from a tree and bounds in front of them blocking their path. From Double's view, it is a rather wiry fool in light green tights and a viridian tunic, with long blond hair falling down to his lower back and wearing a pointy green cap. From the other's views, it is a representative of the reclusive and mostly unknown Elf Nation.

"Halt," cries the Elf, throwing a bow up and pointing it bravely at Double's skull mask. "Why do you cross into our land?"

"Aw, go fuck yourself," Double growls. "We are merely poor travelers, just arrived from the Pickaxe Ridge."

"Pickaxe Ridge?" The Elf's blue eyes narrow. "Mighty strange folk up in the Ridge these days. You aren't one of those... strange hobos, are you?"

"Not really," Double says. "We do have homes, but elsewhere."

Elsewhere,

Kaylee thinks mournfully like the misplaced female protagonist she is.

"Your business?" the Elf demands, slackening his grip on the arrow. "Why do you tread in Elf Land?"

"You're pretty daft, aren't you," Derek observes, stepping foreward. "We are travelers, coming over the Pickaxe Ridge - y'know, lots of mountains? - and we are dead tired. We -" and here he pointed to himself "-want to go to Obsidian Falls. Savvy?"

The elf tilts his head sideways.

"What?" he mumbles after a brief time.

"Just lead us to Obsidian Falls," snaps Double, "and make it quick. My toes are all frozen."

"Alright," says the elf, although he is still wary of the travelers. "But if you be indeed servants of Marusan, then you shall be skewered by our arrows in no time, and that's a fact."

Watching this from the Nether, the Ender Dragon resists the impulse to facepalm.


	13. XI: Obsidian Falls

The Elf Nation is a band of territory surrounding the vulnerable village of Obsidian Falls, a major dropoff point of goods. Obsidian Falls is a center of commerce, and therefore needs quite a large defense force. Thankfully, the town has the Special Elf Corps (SEC), whose job is basically to rain arrows down on any invader and turn them into a human porcupine.

However, their job has become harder in the past few days. Monsters have begun to emerge from the mountains, monsters of unknown origins. Most are undead. The majority of the monsters are zombies, the expendable grunts of Marusan's dark horde; but the more important parts are the skeleton archers and the strange dark skeletons brewed up in Marusan's dungeons. And of course there are the giants.

However, the Elf Nation has fought off the first wave, although at a great cost to them. Parts of the wall are at this moment being rebuilt, and many have died in the battle rush. The banners of the enemy still stream in the distance from the direction of the Big Sandy Desert.

So you can imagine how wary the Elves are as they welcome the party inside their gates and into their fortifications. It is a maze of stone bricks and wood floors, lined with torches and guarded day and night by trained wolves and Elf swordsmen.

The Elf who greets them in the entryway to the fort is named Darathel. He is the general of the armies of the Elves, and an immeasurably quick-tempered fellow. He is in possession of some well-defined cheekbones and a pair of gray eyes. He is also very tall and dressed in green tights and a green tunic. A longbow and iron sword are strapped to his back.

"So you say you have come from the Ridge, eh?" he asks.

"Yes," Double replies. "Most of our party has died up there... some from natural hazards and some from... unnatural ones."

"Turned into skeleton archers, I have no doubt," says Darathel.

"That's it."

"And you are sure nothing followed you down from the mountains?"

"Yup." Double lowers his head. "Our friend Caleb sacrificed himself up there to save us."

"A noble deed," Darathel says. "But come. You must meet our leader and discuss happenings."

"Brilliant," Derek butts in, "brilliant, but can we at least get some food? I'm dead on my feet, y'know that?"

"Certainly," agrees Darethel, "our larders are open to all peaceful folk." Then he picks Derek up by the scruff of the neck and brings him up nose-to-nose. "But do not interject rudely in the conversation again, or you shall find yourself LOCKED OUT."

"Right," says Derek in a choked voice. "Right, right, right. Just... hunger speaking for me, you know?"

"Sure," says Darathel, dropping Derek onto his feet and watching as he stumbles backwards, "sure."

They resume their walk. Walking up a flight of stairs, they arrive at a solid wall. But as Darathel pulls a lever, the wall begins to open. Double sees that it is comprised of pistons and complex redstone construction. The thing splits all the way, and reveals a room lit with glowstone. A woman sits on a throne at the opposite end, facing the gateway. She has long gray hair, a wrinkled face, and a blue robe. By her side is a wolf with a red collar, and unusually it has a diamond helmet sitting on its head.

"Enter," the woman bids. They enter, being careful not to disturb the silence.

"Darathel, stand to attention," orders the woman. Darathel stands stiff as a stone pillar and salutes with a steely look on his face that is almost certainly feigned. The woman slowly stands up from her throne. As she stands, Kaylee notices a satchel at her side filled with tiny saplings.

"I am Delilah," the woman says.

"Good to meet you," says Kaylee before she can stop herself. She has talked out of turn. Everyone gets quiet. But Delilah laughs and nods.

"It is good to meet you, too," she says. "And here I see we have two others..." She walks up to Derek, then to Double. The latter she scritinizes closely, looking into the skull mask.

"Ah," she says. "As I expected. Good." She steps backwards. "You three are wanting to enter Obsidian Falls, yes?"

"That's it," says Double, nodding.

"The gate's through the tree farm," Delilah says, holding a hand towards a door set next to the throne. Double pushes it open and is confronted with a large area, open to the sun, and filled with trees. He walks towards the gate at the other end, and the others follow.

They emerge into Obsidian Falls.

The city is occupied. Elves patrol the streets, and signs displaying propaganda are everywhere. A banner with two leaves wrapped in an X shape around a sword over a yellow background flutters in the wind over the nearby cathedral. Inside the steeple, a bell tolls. The place is eerily quiet except for the bell and the sound of Testificates going about their business.

Double walks down the street, and as he passes a pair of Elf guards they eye him suspiciously. They do nothing, however, only stare.

"I don't like it," Kaylee whispers to Derek. The latter puts his arm around her shoulder.

"It's okay," he reassures. "We're safe with the Elves."

But even he isn't quite sure of that. Those guards had looked at them in an awfully strange way earlier. And right now the street is near-deserted, with abandoned market stalls still standing and here and there the odd Testificate child running home. A stray ocelot-cat brushes against his leg, but he pays it no heed.

They enter into the library. A few white-coated Testificates are sitting at a small low table, talking amongst themselves. Their bulbous noses and extended foreheads are sillhouetted against the daylight flowing from the window.

"... The books," Derek hears one say to another, "we mustn't let it happen..."

Some ordinary villagers are looking through leatherbound volumes of literature. The title of one, Kaylee notices, is "The Simulation". This library must be a treasure trove of old Minecraftian literature, written by players and villagers alike.

Derek sits down at a table opposite a pink-robed Testificate priest. The others sit down as well.

"Well," says Derek lightheartedly, "we've made it."

"Yes," says Double solemnly, "but we have lost many in the journey."

There is a silent moment. A bird twitters outside. Somewhere in the shelves a Testificate moves a book.

"We shall mourn them later," the large man says, rising to his feet. "We have goods to deliver... and we shall have to explain to the mayor why we only have a quarter of our stuff."

They are just leaving when they have to clear the doorway for two Elf guards, who stride into the quiet area. They walk to where the priest is sitting, and one of them taps the holy man on the shoulder.

"Come with us," he says gruffly.

"What did I do?" asks the priest.

"We suspect you of armed assault," the guard replies.

"That was a _baptism_!" the Testificate protests, as he is dragged away, his pink robe flapping around his dragging feet. A look of desparation is plastered onto his face, and as he disappears through the doorway he can be heard kicking at the ground.

"Rough place," Kaylee says. She looks away as Double turns to look at her quizically.


	14. XII: Taken

At noon that day, a rider enters Obsidian Falls.

He is riding a black horse, and is cloaked entirely in black.

The Elf guards look suspiciously at him as he passes through the gates. But they don't do anything, not even search the horse and rider.

The horseman rides straight into the middle of town, in the Town Square to be precise, where the well sits. He dismounts, and his black cloak billows around him as he stands and calls the village around him.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he cries when he has a full audience, "welcome to the best day of your life!"

He throws back his hood. Underneath he is a pale-skinned young man with several pimples and short greasy black hair. His eyes are a deep blue, streaked with violet.

"Welcome to the traveling antics of Nathan the pyromaniac!" the young man says. "Now I'll need a volunteer from the audience!"

There is silence. Nobody who advertises their profession as "traveling Pyromaniac" is bound to be a good clean person. Finally, a delicate hand is raised into the air.

"You there, young lady," says Nathan the Traveling Pyromaniac. "Come on up!"

Kaylee steps up from the crowd to where Nathan is standing, beaming and holding a flint and steel. "Excellent, excellent," the performer laughs, "and now, with this implement, I shall make this young lady vanish without a trace... then bring her back!"

The crowd cheers, although halfheartedly. Nathan walks around Kaylee, inspecting her with one eye closed and the other bulging open.

"Right," he says finally. "I'll need to calculate this..."

Nathan experimentally sparks the flint and steel. It makes red and blue sparks. He beams. "Brilliant," he whispers, and turns again to the crowd. "Now, I'll need you all to focus on the girl here. Watch this." He brings the flint and steel slowly closer to her shoulder. Then he strikes it.

What happens next is a flash of white, and then Kaylee is gone. A hole has been torn in space in the place where she had stood. Strange swirling mystical patterns make up the interior, and purple sparks surround the borders. Nathan begins to grow taller, his legs thicker. For a moment, his muzzle extends and the beginnings of wings sprout from his shoulderblades. Then he is gone and the portal contracts into nothing.

Derek, watching from the crowd, knows that Kaylee has been taken to the Nether. He leaps to his feet.

"The Ender Dragon has taken her to the Nether!" he exclaims. "Double, we need to do something!"

Then he realizes that Double is no longer by his side.

"Double?"


	15. XIII: Into Hell

Kaylee opens her eyes, and for a moment wonders if she should have left them closed. She is knee deep in brown sludge.

"Eurgh," she groans.

She smells the air. It smells of smoke and iron and the open doors of a furnace. The walls around her are made of some sort of rough pink substance. She cannot tell if it's solid or not, but she has a hunch that it is.

Kaylee moves her foot, and the sludge slows her movement. She pauses, and the foot slowly sinks back into the sludge. Her mind races.

Where am I,

she thinks.

It is worth mentioning that, in all her travels in Minecraftia before she was transported inside it, she never reached the Nether before. Therefore she isn't aware of its existence, and only thinks that this is a momentary glitch in the game's programming or some user playing a trick on her.

But she can feel the sludge gripping at her legs. It is making a faint screaming noise, so faint that she has to strain to hear it. This place sets her on edge so very much. It's just fundamentally twisted.

She realizes there is a door, set into the strange pink stuff. Lifting a foot up, she winces as the screaming gets louder and more anguished... if slime clinging to the floor can be in any way anguished. The pink stuff is indeed solid, although rather flaky under her bare feet (her shoes have been lost underneath the sucking gloop). She walks down the corridor cautiously. Even though it is dark, she notes, there are no bats. And no spiderwebs either.

She emerges onto a cliff edge. The scene below her is horrifying in almost every way possible. There are many fires burning near the shores of a sea of seething magma. Stalagtites of pink stab down fron the ceiling, and stalagmites from the floor are laced with railroad. There is the sound of whipping. A creature screams, long and loud. Below her are a great number of pig-like creatures, except they are bipedal and splotched with green and gray. A large one is holding a whip to a smaller one, and the smaller one screams as it mines some sort of shiny white rock with its bare hands.

Kaylee steps quickly backwards, her breath coming in short bursts.

Where is this place she landed in? Nothing this terrible could have been found on the Overworld. This... this must be Hell itself.

She notices a ladder made of wood beams tied to an outcrop of the pink stone. Walking to it, she places a hand on the rungs. The splintery wood bites into her soft palms, and she bites back a yelp. But she climbs anyways. As she does so, she looks down. There appear to be great machines churning and releasing billowing smoke from where the pig creatures are. She sees a scrawny pig creature load a great heap of the white shiny rock onto a minecart, and then push it down into a vast furnace. The cart vanishes into the fire. Kaylee looks back up. The ladder stretches for a great distance upwards. She must rest soon; her hands are killing her, and the heat is far too much.

But there is no reprieve. The cliff stretches tall, and there are no side alchoves.

Her hands begin to leave bloody prints on the wood. She feels the pain, but somehow she filters it out. She must get to the top, or she shall fall.

Kaylee looks down again. A great distance down, the fires of the forges of Hell look like the lights of a city.

She keeps climbing. There appears to be an edge, far above, but she cannot be sure. It could, for all she knows, be some sort of mirage brought on by the heat.

She suddenly hears something unusual. It is a cry. It sounds like the exclamation of a child, the cooing of a small baby. But Kaylee feels that this is somewhat out of place in the land of fire and brimstone. She quickens her pace. Somewhere far ahead, obscured by smoke, a white shape begins to appear. It is featureless in this smog, but Kaylee knows that whatever that is it isn't here to give her a nice pat on the back.

The cry comes again. The white thing pushes out of a smoke bank, and Kaylee sees a curtain of thick tentacles at the bottom of a large pale head. Still, no features. Or maybe just the beginning of features. Kaylee wills herself to climb faster, but her legs have reached maximum speed. She is sweating.

She sees the edge of the cliff, and it is a definite edge with definitely edge-like qualities. Kaylee makes for it hopefully. The tentacled thing draws ever closer even as she climbs. Now she can see that all its facial features are closed. But it's slitting open one eyelid, and peering at her with a fiery black orb.

Prey,

a quiet and raspy voice says inside her head. She panics and runs away from the creature. Where she runs she doesn't care. _You cannot escape. You cannot run. You cannot survive. I am the hunter. I am the hunter. I am the hunter. I am the hunter. I am the hunter. I am the hunter. I am..._

"Stop," Kaylee whimpers, hands pressed against her eyes as she blindly runs from the terror.

...the hunter. I am the hunter. I am the hunter...

There is a scream from behind her, and she feels something explode. A wave of heat swells up and brushes her back.

Suddenly from the cliff she is running towards a beam of blue light spans the distance between it and the hunter. The hunter screams. The voice appears in her head, frantic this time.

_No no no must not must not no do not give in no no no no no NO NO NO NO NOOOO NOOOO I AM STRUCK I AM STRUCK I AM STRUCK IT BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURNS!_

Kaylee opens her eyes and looks behind her. The white thing is lurching towards the ground. It is damaged severely, and several tentacles have been seared off by the devastating power of the beam. She runs and runs as it plows into the ground and explodes.

"Kaylee!"

She looks up, and is greeted by two bright white pinpricks looking down at her from a ridge. She also realizes there is a door there, and steps leading up to it.

The figure standing there is Herobrine, obviously. But why is he down here in Hell of all places?

"Welcome to the Nether, Kaylee," Herobrine calls from the ledge.

"How do you know my name?" Kaylee screams.

"Let's say that I've been with you for a while now," says Herobrine. "Come up here. The Ghasts won't try anything near me. That one earlier was pressing its luck."

Kaylee runs to the steps and begins to climb them. Herobrine greets her at the top, and opens the door in the wall. Inside is a front living room, with a few chairs and an iceplace (like a fireplace, but it keeps things cool). The floor is carpeted in red. There is a glass tank full of lava on the wall opposite the iceplace, with several skeletal fish swimming inside. They look rather bored.

"... Erm... nice place," Kaylee says, shyly.

"Built fifty fifty between my friend and I," Herobrine says, shrugging. "By the way, you should meet him." He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts into the other room, "ENDER, WE HAVE A GUEST! FORGET THE TEA AND GET OVER HERE!"

There are soft treads on the wood floor, and a rather smaller-than-expected black dragon with glowing purple eyes stomps in. He is carrying a delicate-looking teacup with detailed purple designs on the rim.

"Oh, hello," he says when he sees Kaylee. "Sorry about that, I meant to teleport you here, but I misjudged the Y-value by about a hundred. I apologise."

"You were Nathan?" Kaylee asks.

The Ender Dragon morphs into the Nathan form. "At your service," the Pyromaniac says, before reverting back into the Ender Dragon. "How do you like that?"

"Pretty okay," Kaylee admits. "But why am I here anyways?"

"Because you're a chosen one," says Herobrine.

"Sorry," says Kaylee, "I'm The Chosen One?"

"No, you're _a _chosen one," Herobrine explains.

"There's more than one?"

"Yeah," says Herobrine, and shrugs again. "See, it all started back a long time ago when a lot of people from the other side began to get sucked in here. The number just increased and increased, and all things that enter seem to be chosen in some way. People just got tired of calling them The Chosen One all the time and just referred to them as chosen ones. Either to fight an evil monster or rescue a town from destruction, these people have tried to live out their destinies... but some have failed. Still, there are more than a million chosen ones living in Minecraft at the moment."

"So," asks Kaylee, "these things happen often?"

"In the End we get usually one person per week," the Ender Dragon says. "Herobrine tells me that the Nether - that's this dimension, by the way - gets about two per week, and the Overworld gets ten per week. Add that up over thousands and thousands of years, and we have ourselves quite a few chosens."

"Most of the ones here get picked off by Ghasts and shit," Herobrine adds. "Or at worst they're captured by Pigmen and are brutally enslaved digging up quartz for their infernal war machines." He blinks, and then lifts his index finger. "By infernal, I mean even more infernal than most things down here."

"So you are lucky," the Ender Dragon says.

"Anyways," says Herobrine, "we brought you down here because of a threat to all three dimensions."

"The dark sorcerer Marusan," the Ender Dragon says. "You may have heard people curse his name before. You may have run into his servants up on the Ridge. And right now his armies are bearing down on the Elf Nation. We have but one option: enroll you in Fight School."

"Fight School?" Kaylee asks, dismayed. "But my PE grade's a C-plus!"

Herobrine and the Ender Dragon exchange glances. "What's a grade?" Herobrine whispers to the Ender Dragon. The latter shakes his head.

"Kaylee, you are our only hope," says Herobrine. "Well, you and the fifty other people in Fight School. You're the 51st, hence you're Number 51."

"Look," Kaylee says, her voice shaking, "I just want to go home. I've just been following along with the others 'cause I want my life back!"

Herobrine puts his hand on her shoulder, almost a fatherly gesture. "Look," he says, "if we don't do this then you won't even be able to _play _Minecraft when you get to the other side. Marusan will wipe it out. He's not fooling around, and we aren't either."


	16. XIV: Derek's Conscription

And now, the moment you have all been waiting for.

You have heard of the evils of Marusan.

Do you really know the man?

We pan across Minecraftia, across the harsh wastelands of the desert, across plains, and then to a tower of great proportions. It looks to be made of a kind of dark gray stone, although the most striking thing about the tower's architecture is that the structure is carved to look like it's made of bones. At the top of the tower, the very pinnacle of hatred, the top two floors are a skull, grinning out at the world. It is dark, a dark and evil grinning skull. Something about it falls deep into the uncanny valley.

And at last, at the very top of the skull, standing on the edge of the tower and gazing down at his armies, Marusan smiles beneath his hood.

He turns away, his black metal gauntlets flashing in the light of the pale sun. The clouds are heavy and dark around this place. It's fairly indicative of an evil place, but the towers just seems to attract stormclouds to itself of its own accord.

A lieutenant falls in beside him. He is a black skeleton, bedecked in iron armor.

"Our armies are ready, Lord Marusan," he rasps.

Marusan is silent for a moment. Then he swivels his head around to peer at the lieutenant with two ember-bright eyes beneath the cowl.

"Brilliant," he says. "Superb. Excellent."

"But," the lieutenant adds, "the Elf Nation's mounting a defense. Already they have repaired the damaged walls."

"Blow them up," Marusan snaps. "Surely we have enough gunpowder and sand to blow half the realm to smithereens!"

Pan back to Obsidian Falls. Then zoom in on the gigantic wall surrounding it, still being mended by Elf craftsmen. Enter through a window, and we see Derek sitting in a chair on one side of a desk. He looks tired and haggard. On the other side and clearly in the position of power we see Delilah, stewardess of the Elf Nation, stroking her cat lovingly. But she has a disapproving look on her face.

"Why have you come to me?" she asks.

"I have a bit of bad news. There won't be any more goods," Derek mutters.

"Why?"

"My crew's gone," Derek says.

"They are all gone?" she asks sourly. "How is that?"

"Kaylee got taken to the Nether and Double just vanished," Derek says.

"Well, we cannot allow you to just... sit around," Delilah snaps.

"On the contrary," Derek begins.

"Yes?"

"... On the contrary, I don't have a livelihood to return to," Derek admits. "I've lost most of the mules and all of my crew, and my business can't survive this loss."

Outside, the leaf-and-sword banner of the Elf Nation flutters.

Delilah sighs and stands up, carrying the cat under one arm as she walks behind Derek and places one hand on the chair back.

"Well, we're either going to have to boot you out or conscript you into the SEC," Delilah warns. "Choose or I shall choose for you. You may not like the results."

_Tick, tick, tick _goes the clock on the wall. The blue outnumbers the black.

Derek is silent as Delilah walks slowly around the room and then sits down behind the desk facing him. Then she speaks: "Time's up, Derek. It looks like you'll be in the SEC. Congratulations."

Derek stands up suddenly.

"I'll be going," he says, trying to keep the shakiness out of his voice. It is at least an admirable try, but some fluctuation slips through. "I guess to die in battle is better than..._ to die alone_." He walks out, slamming the door of Delilah's office behind him. He walks into the deserted sunlit throne room. A beam of it shines down from some high-perched windows. It glistens off the green and yellow banners of the Elf Nation.

He goes through the tree farm and into Obsidian Falls. Walking down the streets, he notices that they are even more deserted than before. Plus there are double the amount of SEC and Elf guards patrolling.

Walking into the library, he notices that several chests are torn open, the hinges broken. There are also several books scattered and smashed on the floor. The bootprints are quite clear. Derek stares down at them. Several old and rare fics are among the casualties.

He sits down at the table, and stares out the window. A squad jogs by, in some sort of drill. Soon he'll be joining them, if not in the drills then on the frontlines. But he has nothing to lose anymore.

A Testificate villager brushes past him. The villager is quiet and introverted, not speaking to Derek at all. Not even a greeting.

Who is the hero here?

Derek thinks suddenly. _And who is the villain? Are there heroes and villains at all? Are there only heroes or only villains? What is morality? What is justice? What is safety? What is this thing behind the walls: a safe haven or a den of decay? What is the Elf Nation, if not a potential conquerer and empire? And Delilah... potential dictator? Screw morality, this is getting too melodramatic. Too much melodrama for one day... just time to fight. Time to stand up for whatever only one time, then... make a break for it. Yes._

He stands up and walks out of the library, but this time with a new determined set in his shoulders. He is determined to leave this sorry place behind him. A small child runs past him, but stops when it sees Derek moving purposefully towards the gates. The gender is indeterminate, it could be either. Derek doesn't care. The child can live its life. He has to live his.

Or die trying.


	17. XV: Derek's Run

He arrives in the gate passage just as a dozen SEC agents burst out of a side door. He nonchalantly falls in with their ranks. They don't seem to notice him, primarily being concerned with something that they talk in hushed tones about. Something about a breach of the territory, something getting too close.

"What's happening," he asks the guy next to him.

"Marusan's army's split off about fifty skeletons, zombies, and dark skeletons," the Elf replies.

"And we're supposed to fight them?" Derek asks.

"First we rendezvous with Darathel, then we go to the fortifications and artillery," the Elf explains.

"You've got artillery?" Derek asks.

"That is so," the Elf says, before they enter the outside of the wall. Darathel is waiting. Behind him, very far behind him, are fluttering banners. They are not ones of the Elf Nation, and there are only two of them. Darathel orders the force into a line.

"Alright," he says, "we're going to intercept the preliminary force. Now, do all of you have weapons?" Everyone nods. "Good. Present arms!"

As everyone's swords and bows flash out, Darathel walks down the line of SEC agents, inspecting them. He comes across Derek's weapon, the fire-aspected blade Vanquisher. Placing a finger along the blade, he gently runs it up the edge.

"Hm," he breathes. "Quite sharp. And... do I detect a fire enchantment?"

"Yes," Derek says. "You do, sir."

Darathel nods and steps back, a small smile playing on his lips.

"Alright, if we are all ready," he barks, "let's move out. Confront them with swords and bows drawn and let's hope they have enough sense to back down."

They set off into the woods.

A few minutes later they arrive at the edge of the woods, and see in front of them across the plains a horde of monsters. The mobs advance swiftly. Darathel puts his sword in a defensive position. Derek puts his in one as well. The rest of the SECs heft their bows and swords and axes. The mobs attack.

Derek sees Darathel decapitating a zombie and smashing the ribs off a white-boned Skeleton, before Derek is assaulted on all sides by the green-skinned undead. He lashes out with Vanquisher, and catches one on the shoulder. Howling, it staggers back and falls dead to the ground, the corpse smouldering. He then spins around and slashes two others across the throats and one clean in half from the torso. There is blood on the ground. A dead Elf lies nearby staring blankly up at the sky.

Derek notices movement out of the corner of his eye. As the Skeleton releases the arrow, he turns and launches himself backwards, avoiding the arrows. They whir past him, and one of them grazes him on the cheek slightly before thunking into the ground. He retaliates by leaping up and burying Vanquisher up to the hilt in the Skeleton's skull. The Skeleton's eyes glow, and its bony body crumbles to ash from the pent-up heat building in the marrow.

He realizes that there are several archers perched up in trees looking down at him with longbows. Derek twists to the side as a storm of wood and flint tears the ground to pieces. Thank Notch he isn't there. He leaps up and slashes at the Skeleton archers. Clipping one on the collarbone he watches as it falls out of the tree, flaming. The others increase their arrow production. Derek is dodging and weaving, but several arrows have already wounded him.

Pain sprouts from his shoulder.

He sees an arrow almost carve his ear off, and sees also the trail of sonic disrupture it leaves behind. With a roar he lunges at a group of skeletons. One sweeping blow and they're all in bits. The pain creates red rims around his eyes, but that's okay. Red rims help channel the fury.

Derek leaps into the air, and as he does so something dark and skeletal intercepts him with a sword. They crash into the ground, rolling around, trying to off one-another. Derek's opponent is a large skeleton with mottled dark-gray bones and a skull with no semblance of a smile. It stares him down with empty sockets as it tries to sever his spine with a sharp-edged stone sword.

"Get off me," Derek snarls, beating at the ground with his feet and trying to launch the dark skeleton away from under him. The dark skeleton is persistent, however. It swings the stone sword down, and Derek brings up Vanquisher to block the stroke. There is a clash, a wave of sparks, and a jet of fire roaring out from the impact. The dark skeleton's blade cracks loudly and then splinters in half. Derek's triumphant ascention to his feet is short-lived, however, as the dark skeleton pops off one of its own ribs and swipes at Derek with the jagged broken end.

"Derek, take this!" Darathel yells, tossing a spare arrow to him. Derek grabs it out of midair and wedges the head firmly into the gap between two of the dark skeleton's vertebrae. The dark skeleton's head snaps up, and then it tears off a second rib and becomes a whirl of black death heading straight for its opponent.

Derek catches a second arrow from Darathel and then a bow.

"Thanks," he shouts at his comrade.

"No problem," is the answer.

He pulls the string back and launches the arrow into the flurry of ribs.

For the adequate effect, this next scene should be recounted only in snapshots, taken in between different stages of the arrow's passage.

First, the arrow swings out of the bow and screams through the air.

Second, it passes through the ribs, through a hairline crack in between the weapons, and continues.

Third, it strikes the arrow that is already lodged between the vertebrae.

Fourth, it splits the arrow with a _thwang!_

Fifth, it drives the severed arrowhead deeper into the connective matter.

Sixth, the dark skeleton freezes where it stands and drops to the ground, paralyzed.

Derek breathes a sigh of relief.

He looks down at his fallen enemy. With a swipe, Vanquisher has cleaved the black skull in two. Dark energy seeps out in the form of fog, then dissipates into nothing.

Panting, Derek steps back. He has defeated his most powerful enemy... in a mere minute, no less. The feeling of victory washes over him... just as a wave of arrows swarm over his head. He turns around, and there is a horde of zombies and four skeleton archers. But he knows what to do now: kill these nameless goons, then run off and never return to sad little Obsidian Falls.

He sweeps forward with Vanquisher, and as the tip hits a zombie the enemy explodes, sending a wave fo fire back at the other zombies and the rear skeleton archers. As the horde begins to burn, Derek leaps up and buries his blade in the ground, creating a shockwave and destroying all the mobs in a flash of flame.

The battle is won, but Derek notices the burnt-out shells of artillery. He pays these no heed. He takes to his heels. Darathel notices this.

"Where are you going?" he yells at Derek's back.

"Away," Derek replies, and disappears into the forest.


	18. XVI: Fight School

Kaylee wakes up in the Nether, sweating and gasping for breath. She is lying on a slab of wool; because of the strange laws of physics in this hellish dimension, beds cannot be placed down or else a rather fiery reaction shall occur.

She has just had a harrowing, terrifying dream, one which had felt real in all respects.

Kaylee slowly eases herself off the bed, and opens the blinds in her window. She is greeted by a new day in the Nether, and sighs in relief. For a second she had thought she'd see one of those white ghost things outside her window.

She exits her room and enters Herobrine's kitchen. The man is absent, but Kaylee knows somehow that the Ender Dragon is still here. She creeps through the kitchen, and into the dining room. The Ender Drago glances up from a china cup of tea that is so thin the liquid can be seen right through it.

"Oh, hello, Kaylee," he says absentmindedly. "Ready for Fight School, are you?"

"Not quite," Kaylee admits, sitting down at the table. "Any more tea?"

"I could get a cup," the Ender Dragon offers.

"Sure."

The Ender Dragon shuffles out of his chair and into the kitchen. There is the sound of water being poured, and seconds later the Ender Dragon returns with another paper-thin piece of crockery. Kaylee takes it, and daintily sips it, keeping an eye on the lord of the End as he sits down.

"Now," the Ender Dragon sighs, as he sits down, "what do you want to know about Fight School?"

"What do we do in Fight School?" Kaylee asks, sipping again.

"You train to become knights of the land," the Ender Dragon replies. "Protectors, a new wave of people trained to fight evil. You will train to be a Protector, and then you and your class shall ascend to the Overworld to launch an assault on Marusan."

"I've got this strange feeling that this was done before," Kaylee murmurs. The Ender Dragon lifts one black velvet ear.

"Oh, it has been done before," the Ender Dragon confirms. "Long, long ago, before your time, there was an order of knights called the Custodes. They protected the land from the forces of..." The Ender Dragon pauses, and a shadow seems to fall across the room. "... An unspeakable evil. They had almost pushed the evil's forces back when Marusan appeared without warning. He betrayed and murdered the head Custos, and in his place ruled as the lord of evil, under the influence of the unspeakable evil..."

"We're going to reinstate the... er... Custodes?" Kaylee asks.

"Yes," the Ender Dragon replies. "But be warned: when you undertake this training, you will learn about Marusan's order of corrupted Custodes. He calls them the Artissimum... But you will learn about them later." The Ender Dragon sips his tea with a sad look in his eye. "I am getting ahead of myself."

"I also wanted to know what training will be like," Kaylee continues.

The Ender Dragon smiles. "Ah," he says. "Now onto a lighter subject! Well, your training shall consist of several varieties: soul, body, and mind. You Soul Training will involve the art of communicating outside your body with the sourcecode that runs this place, and manipulating said sourcecode slightly. This will prove invaluable. Your Body Training will consist of physical hardships, such as parkour and fighting maneuvers. Be warned, this is strenuous work. Finally, your Mind Training will educate you in patience and wisdom, and how to have a truly open mind while at the same time shutting it from the corrupting hand of evil."

"That sounds simple," Kaylee remarks.

"Be warned, it is not," the Ender Dragon says.

"Oh." Kaylee falls silent, and sips her tea. It has grown cold. She has let it sit for too long. "Any rules I should know about?" she finally asks.

"Those shall be explained when you arrive at Fight School," the Ender Dragon says.

"When do I leave for Fight School," Kaylee asks.

"You are already running somewhat late," the Ender Dragon says.

"Oh shoot!" Kaylee stands up sharply, and the cup falls from her hand and shatters on the floor.

"Be warned, that was my mother's teacup," the Ender Dragon says.

"Stop warning me about things," Kaylee says hurriedly, dashing out the door. She runs outside onto the ledge. In the sky she can see collossal columns of flame and lava licking the clouds of smoke. She sees beside her a sign. It has a painted arrow on it with the words "FIGHT SCHOOL THIS WAY" painted on it haphazardly in chicken scratch.

Kaylee picks up her pace, and soon finds herself on a ledge. She doesn't dare look down; her acrophobia wouldn't like it and neither would she. She keeps running, until at last a doorway appears ahead of her through a bank of smoke. Running inside, she finds the door hanging open and slams it shut without thinking.

She is inside a room made of some white stone, carefully chiseled into blocks and placed down in the shape of a room. Quietly, Kaylee walks into it, and looks around. There are lights on the ceiling, chests and bookshelves lining the walls, and several glowing portals to who knows where. One of them is made of rippling stars against darkness, like space; the others are seemingly completely random colors.

"Good morning," a quiet old voice says from across the room. Kaylee spins, trying to locate the source of the voice. "It is okay," the voice continues, "I am not here to hurt you. Welcome to Fight School."

There is a wizened old man, standing on a pedestal of wood nearby. There doesn't appear to be a door to a different room, just the old man and thousands of books.

"Come closer, child," the old man requests. Kaylee blindly obeys. There is something about him that exudes command, although not in an intrusive way. She stares into the old man's eyes. The old man is leaning on a walking stick, which is yellow-orange and glowing slightly. The old man reaches out a small wrinkled finger, and touches Kaylee on the forehead.

There is silence.

The old man laughs.

"So, you are another student," he chuckles. "Well, well... it's been a while." He dismounts from the wood pedestal, and waves a hand. A door opens in the wall.

"My name is Opus," he says as they exit through the door. "But you may call me master for the time-being, until you have graduated."

They emerge into a large room. Inside is a mass of people. They all look like normal humans, next to the strangely patterned outside users. Opus smiles.

"Let us begin your training," he says.

**END**


	19. BOOK TWO

BOOK II: DIABOLUS ex MACHINA 


	20. Prologue: A Short Recap

...

So, you're back?

...

What exactly are you waiting for? Pull up a chair. I promise it is not booby-trapped. Well, it isn't now. But sit down anyways.

Now then, where did we leave off last time? Let me just find my spot now... ah, here it is.

So, before we begin, let us do a quick recap of events. Kaylee, a human from our side of the screen, was transported into Minecraft. How of why this occured we may never know, but she was trapped inside anyways. She spawned beneath a tree in freezing temperatures in a light dress, and if weren't for Herobrine stopping by with protection the story would be quite different now. Kaylee escaped the cold via a coincidential encounter with a blacksmith and cargo-carrier named Derek. Derek added Kaylee to his entourage, and together they braved the Pickaxe Ridge, the most formidable mountain range in all of known Minecraft. Almost all of the crew died, except for Kaylee, Derek, and a mysterious stranger called Double. When they crossed into the valley on the other side of the Ridge, they journeyed to Obsidian Falls. While inside Obsidian Falls under the watch of the Elf Nation protecting it, Kaylee was taken to the Nether by the Ender Dragon, disguised as a pyromaniac from out of town. Double also disappeared. Derek was left alone to be drafted into the army of the Elf Nation, but escaped combat after an assault just outside Obsidian Falls' walls. Kaylee discovered she was kidnapped to be trained in the arts of an ancient order and defeat Marusan.

Derek has fled into the woods, near the outer rim of the Elf Nation. This is where we shall resume the story...

It resumes not on some glorious battle or evil entity, but on two feet. They are running.


	21. I: Run, Fight, Repeat

He runs.

His feet slam into the ground at full speed as he runs, and dirt showers up onto his pant legs. He is being pursued, by what is unclear. He must run. He must escape. They are getting much too close for comfort. Vanquisher is strapped to his back and gives a loud keening scream as he skids around a corner and dashes down another row of trees.

Derek hides behind a rock and slumps against its hard gray surface, breathing hard and clutching a small wound in his side. He looks at the arrow clutched in his other hand. The flint head has a smear of blood on it. Crimson fills his world for a second, then flickers away. He peers out from behind the rock, obscuring his head behind some tall grass. Vaguely, between the stalks, he sees something pale jerk around the corner and stop. Its head swivels 360 degrees as it scopes the area. Derek hopes that the Skeleton will not find him.

The skeleton has been pursuing him for the last half hour. It was only in the prior three minutes that Derek had felt pain in his side and seen an arrow lodged in him. It had not been launched at full power, so it did not go very deep. But he is bleeding all the same. He swipes his upper body back behind the rock as the Skeleton begins to click down the path he had been running on earlier. Its hollow, eyeless eyes stare blankly ahead. Derek knows the Skeleton has a kind of radar. It cannot see anything to the sides, only straight ahead. Its vision is very limited, like looking through a pair of binoculars except without the zoom. Actually, it is more like wearing a very thickly-padded leather cap, only permanently.

Derek makes sure to keep to the side as the Skeleton's white anklebone passes close to his arm. Neither, he notes, can the Skeleton see below him. The Skeleton has not noted his presence at all, and is merely walking down the path looking for him at its eye-level.

He keeps crouching, but sneaks behind the Skeleton. Quietly, Derek follows it. Pain is still flowing from his side like fire, but that's a secondary matter. What matters at this moment is the hunter and the hunted. He has no time for Vanquisher as he lunges. His hands connect with the exposed shoulderblades, and as he falls from his flying leap he twists, breaking them off and dislodging the arms and a few ribs. The Skeleton turns around, its rudimentary nerves acting at maximum levels of pain. Derek ducks again, and sweeps his foot around into the Skeleton's legs. They give in sideways at the joint, and the torso falls to the forest floor. As the Skeleton's head twists madly on the floor, Derek crushes it with his foot and turns away as the bones turn to dust and blow away mystically.

What a day, he thinks. What a bone-crushing day.

He stoops down by a stream and sloshes some water onto his wound. No parasites exist in water from the Pickaxe Ridge. They'd die before they got to the foothills, either from extreme cold or extreme heights (the stream had once been a waterfall soaring from the Ridge's peaks). The water soothes the wound for a while. Then it explodes back into agony. Derek, hissing, grabs a frond of ferns and wraps it over the wound. Then when that doesn't work he tears off a strip of fabric from what's left of his right sleeve and wraps it around his torso. It quickly develops a red stain.

His wound tended to for now, Derek unsheathes Vanquisher and sets out deeper into the woods, looking for some sort of shelter, preferably a cave where there is a suitable coal vein. He hasn't spotted one yet.

He turns another corner. There are five zombies slouching around. But as they see Derek they straighten, coming in his direction, hands grasping for him. Derek clasps Vanquisher in his hands and sets himself into a defense position. A zombie crashes into him, and Derek swings the blade into the back of the green-skinned head. As the zombie collapses into a heap of ashes, he takes a strike at three others who are advancing in on him from the front. They are sheared in half by the enchanted blade and in seconds they are ash and embers.

The last one turns tail and flees. Cowardly, Derek thinks as he watches it lurch away.

He keeps on moving. He is surprised to find very few other monsters in the forest, even though it is nighttime and a full moon is hanging in the sky. He encounters some bats, but they don't hurt him.

Well, not here they don't.

He at last arrives at a clearing, and finds in the exact center a hole. It is rimmed with smooth stone and appears to go very deep into the earth. Shelter, Derek thinks, but does it have coal I can use? He decides to enter the cave. Walking across the clearing he hoists himself into the cave. It is very dark, but Derek's eyes get used to it and he keeps going. He is looking for any of the telltale signs of coal: dark splotches on the wall, a concentration of digging marks, or just a small side alcove. But he cannot seem to find any yet. In fact, the cave walls are flat and contain nothing interesting. They are almost symmetrical, like something... a user would create. Paranoia takes its first steps onto Derek's shoulders. Is the user still down here, he wonders. Could he or she be territorial?

He turns a corner and an eight-legged thing skitters out of sight. Derek strikes Vanquisher on one of the stone walls, and the edge is immediately sheathed in purple flame. Vanquisher, like enchanted swords of a certain caliber, can light up if struck in a cave, giving a handy if rather dim and pale source of light... and a defense from spiders. He holds it in front of him, and its light shines on the walls. Somehow, the unlit area grows darker in comparison to the enchanted light of Vanquisher.

A shiny green-blue thing drops down from the ceiling at that moment. Derek swings his sword, but the spider skitters out of sight. Derek is frustrated and confused. He has never seen this type of spider before, not anywhere. Of course, he is not very familiar with Cave Spiders, the green-armored monsters that roam abandoned mineshafts and other such abandoned venues.

And abandoned the cave certainly was.

For as he rounded a corner he could see a sign placed on the wall. The strange spider is nowhere to be found. He walks forwards and reads the sign.

"TRAVELER BEWARE

THE CAVE IS A LIE"

The ground suddenly gives way beneath him. No, actually, it opens up like a trapdoor, stone and all. Derek begins to fall. He is plummeting down a very deep pit, a very deep rectangular and even pit, which is almost certainly user-made.

He is plummeting to his doom.


	22. II: A Room Underground

Derek wakes up in a sorry state, and a soggy one at that. He is floating on his side in a shallow pool of water. It had broken his fall, and he is lucky to be alive after what he has been through. He had plummeted through over a mile of stone before losing all awareness of his surroundings. But now here he is, floating in a pool in Notch-knows-where, with no way out.

Good grief, he thinks, they could at least have found me a better tomb.

There is a noise from nearby. A pair of eyes lights up in the darkness. Then, out of the shadows, steps a green thing, slowly and menacingly. It is, undoubtedly, a Creeper. Derek panics, reaches for Vanquisher - and does not find it. He rolls around in the water, rolling back to the opposite edge of the pool. He finds it, scrabbles up onto it, and leaps off. As he does so, he realizes what is below him.

What is below him, so to speak, is nothing.

Well, there is a floor somewhere, three miles below him, but to Derek it's as near to nothing as makes no difference.

He twists in midair, panicking, and grabs onto the stone edge of the pool. Some water droplets spiral out into the inky dark pit.

"Where are you running to?" a voice asks from the other end of the pool. It's rather higher pitched than Derek expects for a Creeper, and there is rather better pronunciation and grammar on the whole. Derek eases himself up back into the pool. The Creeper actually turns out to be a young woman, petite, with red hair falling to her back and a green hoodie pulled over her head.

"Who, er, exactly are you?" he asks.

"Cupa," the Creeper girl replies. "I'm just one of many."

"Er," Derek said, "er... am I going to have to... lay... you or any of your other friends?"

"No, that wasn't the plan," Cupa said.

"Thank Notch," Derek sighs, wading across the pool and jumping out at the other side. "Where am I?"

"You're inside a chamber a mile or so underneath the ground," Cupa replies.

"I know," Derek says irritably. "I mean... do you have a name for this place? What exactly is the purpose of this chamber a mile underneath the ground, exactly? And... er... are you quite sure no laying will be involved?"

"Positive," says Cupa. "And, to answer where you are, you are inside a gigantic temple. My friends and I are the keepers of the temple."

"A temple... to what?" Derek asks.

"Not at this time," Cupa reprimands. "Follow me... you must meet the other keepers."

"This is gonna get mystical, isn't it," asks Derek as he follows Cupa into a rather better lit area than before. "You're gonna have some sort of blood ritual or something, and it'll be sick."

Cupa laughs. "No, silly," she says, flipping a red strand into the cavern of her hood and out of her eyes.

"Good," says Derek. "That's the last thing I need."

"Good morning, Yaebi," says Cupa as they pass a shadow in the corner.

"Oh hello," says Yaebi. "Don't mind me, I'm just standing here."

"So you are," says Cupa. "Hey, by the way, this is Derek. He's new here. He'll be staying here until we feel he's good."

"Right," Yaebi says, sinking deeper into the corner and vanishing into the shadows.

Derek and Cupa turn a corner into a high-ceilinged cathedral-like area. The floor is polished stone, and the walls are as well. There are several other Keepers standing around, talking, but as soon as they see Derek and Cupa they fall silent and watch the carefully.

"Are you all dressed like mobs?" asks Derek.

"Yes," says Cupa. "It's a custom. We protect the mobs, thus we must dress as the mobs do."

She passes through the Keepers, all female. They stare at Derek as he passes on the heels of Cupa, and one of them giggles softly. Derek feels his face turn red. He doesn't like giggles. Giggles usually mean he isn't being told things, especially those things which concern first and foremost himself.

"There's a series of rooms here that I think you'll find satisfactory," says Cupa, smiling. "I regret to say that the rooms don't have dividing walls, so you'll have a roommate."

"Perfectly fine with me," says Derek. "Craftin' School was like that."

"Then you'll love this," says Cupa. She opens a door with the numbers 5 and 6 written overtop on a wooden sign. Derek steps in, and looks around. The walls are made of a pleasant dark wood. Spruce? Yes, yes indeed.

"Your interior decorator should be praised," Derek compliments.

"Aw, thanks," says Cupa. "I made it myself. I made all the rooms."

"Then you should be praised," says Derek.

"Have a good time," says Cupa, shutting the door.

Derek begins to explore the room. He discovers a small wash basin in the corner, a modest little kitchenette with an ice chest and furnace, and a parlor. The parlor connects with a similar parlor on the other side. This alternate parlor, Derek notices, is scuffed and generally downtrodden. He wonders if his roommate has been staying here for a long time.

"I should meet my roommate," he says out loud, and walks into the other room. He notices the marks on the walls first, then notices the strange poster tacked up on the wall. It reads: "GREETINGS FROM LuaLearners!" Derek doesn't know what the hell LuaLearners is, but he hopes it isn't some evil corporation or something. That would be bad. Underneath the text, a strange being is smiling and waving at the reader. The creature is almost like a Minecraftian, but its head is a rounded cylinder.

"Who are you?" says a voice, and Derek turns to find another strange creature looking at him from the kitchenette. This creature has a head of untidy brown hair, and scars knotting his face. It wears a tunic of some black futuristic material, baggy cargo pants, and scuffed black boots that look like they are made for war.

"I'm... your new roommate," he says to the thing.

"Oh, really?" The thing raises an eyebrow. "Nice to meet you then."

"Sorry to be rude," says Derek, "but what exactly are you?"

"Well, it's a bloody long story," says the thing. "Got pulled from my planet all the way here. I don't know how, but... well, it happened." The thing shrugs. There is no doubt now that it is male.

"Do you happen to have... a name?" asks Derek.

"'Course I have a damn name," the thing grumbles. Then his face falls a bit. "Sorry, I forgot I'm in unknown territory. Actually, y'know, I may have been here once or twice. My name's not important, but you can call me O2."

"Well then, good to meet you O2," says Derek, reaching out a hand. They shake, and retract their hands. "I'm Derek by the way," he adds.

"Cool," says O2. "Hey, wanna have dinner? You'll never guess what I've cooked."


	23. III: Body and Soul

_Clank._

_Clank._

_Clank-scraaaaaaape._

_Clank._

_CRASH!_

Another dead, and she isn't even trying.

Kaylee balances on the network of cables, holding her own against several armed users. They are all students of the Fight School, and they are all going against her. Today is her day to be the Warden of the Net, and she is determined to defend the central support with her life.

She jabs at a user sneaking up behind her, and pushes him off the netting and into the lava, where he disappears. Bang bang, another dead. Clash clash, a lot more to go. Kaylee focuses on keeping the sword from wavering as she faces another user. The user jumps in the air, legs curled underneath him, screaming bloodlust. Kaylee tries to defend herself, but the user has already struck another blow to the central support. The net wobbles. The hardened gravel latticework springs up slightly underfoot.

The user allows his friend to strike. Kaylee beheads him with a swipe. As she does so, the body disappears, as they all do in death.

Suddenly, she is attacked from all sides by powerful forces. She tries to push them off, but too late. They attack her, bringing her to the ground and beheading her with a slam of a battleaxe. She blacks out.

Then she springs back to life again, only this time she is in a glass box with the rest of the people who have died during the match. She sighs, and runs a hand through her hair. She watches the central support waver and crash into pieces, the net shear off and drop into the lava; the game is won, but she has lost.

"Good," says the voice of Master Opus. "Good good good. That was another good match, and Kaylee, you seem to be learning very well."

Master Opus appears from behind a door, and beside him stands the tall, bald and dark-skinned Master Chi. Master Chi has his arms folded in front of him, ever-judging his pupils. His gray-eyed face is set in a stony hard line, and he observes the crowd.

"I emphasize time and time ag'in," he says, "do not let your guard down... else y'all be broken by y'own hesitance. Do not let this happen, people! When your ass is on the line as a Warden of the Net, y'all gonna see what I mean."

Everyone salutes. Kaylee hesistates, then salutes. Master Chi is the most demanding of her teachers, for he is the Body Training Master and as a rule he has to be bossy and stern-faced. But Soul Training is next, and she likes Soul Training far better than a day on the Net.

"Now," says Master Chi, "I hope ya learned something today, 'cause you ain't comin' back her tomorrow without some real skills. I'll see ya'll tomorrow, same time, same place."

The students file out. Kaylee splits from the group and as they all go to their courses she goes to her Soul Training lesson. She arrives at the office of Master Kalo, and gently pushes the door open. Master Kalo is sitting in meditation. Beside him, something floats. It is a book, and an Eye of Ender is staring resolutely at it. As Kaylee enters, the eye turns to her. A note block in the corner begins to speak in Master Kalo's voice.

_"Good, good. Well, you're here. Excellent. Shall we begin our lessons?"_

"Yes, Master Kalo," says Kaylee. She sits down, crossing her legs, in front of the dreadlocked Master Kalo. Master Kalo's eyes open. The book and Eye of Ender drop to the floor, now dead as stones.

"Have you cleared your mind?" said Master Kalo.

"Yes, sir," lied Kaylee. Master Kalo could sense she was lying, however.

"No," he said, raising a finger and speaking in his usual mellow tones. "You really need to clear your mind this time. What's bothering you?"

Kaylee swallows. All through the morning, a needle in the back of her mind has been digging ever-deeper and deeper into her cerebellum.

"I feel like there's danger," she says. "Not for me," she added hastily. "For someone else."

Master Kalo smiles. "Can you tell me who is in danger?"

Kaylee tries to think.

"N-no, Master Kalo," she says at last.

"Then... you have nothing to worry about," replies Master Kalo softly. "When one begins to undertake Soul Training, they hear these... voices, these lost spirits. But the key to control of the source is never to let this celestial backwash get in the way of your access."

"I understand, Master Kalo," says Kaylee. But then she cannot hold herself back, and blurts out, "But I feel... evil! Despair! Lots of it! You tell me that isn't saying something?!"

Master Kalo sighs.

"Evil is everywhere," he says. "We are fighting evil, or at least the evil of Marusan, and you have just recently been made aware of evil in the source... Hearing voices and having forboding feelings is a natural byproduct of an open source tutelage."

"So it says nothing?"

"Like I said, backwash. Celestial backwash. Keep your hands clean of that muck and you shall be able to connect so deeply into the source it'll meld with your life."

"...I understand, Master Kalo," says Kaylee. "Really. I'll try to filter it out."

"Good," says Master Kalo. "Now, are you ready to learn more about connection? Do you want to keep dabbling your fingers at the water's edge, or do you want to dive deeper and see how far the ocean goes?"

"I'll keep going," says Kaylee, and closes her eyes.


	24. IV: Night Terrors

"... and that's how I got this scar right here," finishes O2, grinning and running a finger down the knotted white line beside his right eye.

"Wow," says Derek, chewing on something that tastes kind of like chicken.

"Anyways," says O2, "time's a-wastin'. I'm off to bed or something. See ya."

Derek gets up from the table, and Overseer 2 does the same. They walk away from each other, and O2 disappears around a corner. Derek squints around the room. There doesn't appear to be a bed, until he spots an alcove in the wall holding one. Gratefully, he hoists himself up into the bed and pulls the covers over himself. Then he closes his eyes and falls asleep. His world is shrouded in deep blue, deep ocean blue.

And he is suddenly up to his neck in brown sludge.

Gasping and gurgling, he tries to move his arms, but to no avail. The stuff is stuck around him and is slowly solidifying. He sees the furniture of the room bobbing in the ooze freely, whereas he cannot bob or even move one toe. Only his head is protruding from the surface.

"Sh... sh..." he wheezes. "SHIT!"

He contracts the muscles in his right arm, straining against the hard mud. At last, the coating around his arm is beginning to crack. Derek strains and finally smashes the case away. Just as he does so, however, there is an ominous dull roaring noise, a hiss, and fire suddenly billows all over him.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" he screams, and all at once the mud vanishes. What used to be flame is now a blanket, wrapped around him. He has fallen from the alcove with the bed in it, and is now on the floor with a pain in his left shoulder (which he landed on).

Dislocated, he thinks. He carefully unravels the blanket and sits up. Derek's room is dim, but O2's is alight with fresh torches stemming from his doorway. Derek gets up, pops his shoulder back in on a wall, and walks over to the door. O2 is kneeling down, his ear pressed into the crack.

"What are you doing here?" he whispers fiercely as Derek taps him on the shoulder. "They think you're asleep! Be quiet!"

Derek gets down and listens with O2. At first, the natural ambience of the underground temple is all he can hear, but then he manages to filter out that and discern a low-voiced conversation. It is presumably between a girl, possibly Cupa although Derek cannot be sure, and a young man who sounds like Yaebi from when he arrived.

"My lady," he hears Yaebi whisper, "we have gathered enough charges."

"Nice, nice," Cupa replies. "Great. The Book's gonna like this."

"A nice influx, eh?"

"Yes, quite."

"When will we do it, my lady?"

"I'll think about it. Right now, we have guests. Tomorrow, we will explain to them the purpose of this place."

"Yes, my lady."

"Tonight, however, I shall prepare the circuitry. Hopefully it does not break. I have complete faith in your personal Redstone shaft."

"My workers are very skilled at refining, so you needn't worry, my lady."

"You are right, I needn't. Now, Yaebi, I shall depart - what was that noise?"

Derek, by accident, scrapes the door with his cheekbone. O2 gives him the finger before snuffing out all the torches and flattening himself against a wall. Derek flattens himself against a wall as well, and just in time. Footsteps echo outside the room.

Derek hears the footsteps arrive at the door, and the rustle of cloth as someone bends down. There is a soft scratching on the floor. Someone is looking underneath the door crack, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Derek squeezes his eyes shut. He knows that Cupa or Yaebi cannot be hostile; they would have killed him already. But he knows also that being caught staying up at night when you are supposed to be asleep can be something that breaks most people's trust.

There is a sniffing noise.

Someone is sniffing the air.

Sniffing the air, looking for them.

It must be Yaebi. The sniffing sounds more clipped, proof of being in a hurry, the perpetual state of the working man.

"There's nothing," says Yaebi at last. The sniffing stops and there are sounds of footsteps returning to their prior positions. Then the two outside the room walk away to the right, and their steps fade out and are replaced by the ambience.

"Well," says O2, "that was weird."

"Yeah," says Derek.

"What book're they talking about anyways?" asks O2 grumpily to nobody in particular.


End file.
